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Consumers to pay for French BSE tests

PARIS, France -- French beef eaters must bear the cost of a new BSE testing scheme, the country's farm minister has said.

Meanwhile, several European countries previously thought to be free of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), including Italy, have confirmed cases of mad cow disease.

France this month began the process of testing for BSE, in all cattle more than 30 months of age that are destined for the food chain.

It hopes the tests will calm consumer fears about the fatal, brain-wasting illness that scientists believe can be passed to humans in the form of new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease via infected beef.

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Farm minister Jean Glavany said the decision -- agreed by farmers, meat packers and retailers -- would add one French franc ($0.143) to the cost of a kilogramme of beef.

"We have reached agreement on passing on the cost downstream," Glavany said as he emerged from the roundtable discussion with meat industry representatives.

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"We must convince consumers that tested beef is a little bit more expensive than untested beef," he said.

The tests, which even Glavany has said are not 100 percent reliable, cost about 500 francs per animal.

The EU is paying one fifth of this cost. The French government had asked meat packers to shoulder the balance, a burden they had angrily rejected.

BSE crisis continues

More cases of BSE continue to be reported across Europe. Spain said on Tuesday it detected two more suspected cases of mad cow disease but the country's agriculture minister urged consumers not to panic and rejected a call from opposition parties for his resignation.

Miguel Arias Canete said the two new suspected cases had been reported in the northern region of Asturias.

So far Spain has confirmed five cases of the disease in northwestern Galicia and the northern Castille and Leon regions, both of which neighbour Asturias.

The crisis has caused estimated losses of 11 billion pesetas ($62 million) per month in Spain's meat sector as beef sales have plunged since the first mad cow case was found in November.

Spain's government has drawn up a $300 million emergency package to compensate farmers and improve detection.

Spanish farmers on Tuesday suspended blockades of slaughterhouses across the country after the government said it would take steps to tackle mad cow disease.

Farmers halted two-day nationwide protests after Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called a meeting for Wednesday to consider measures to deal with the disease, state radio reported.

Belgium said late on Monday tests had uncovered two new cases, bringing its total to 21. Italy previously thought to be BSE-free, has also reported its first suspected cases of mad cow disease.

In Italy, a third and final analysis of brain tissue on Tuesday confirmed mad cow disease in an animal being butchered in a slaughterhouse which supplies McDonald's, experts said. A Turin-based zoological institute which was conducting the tests announced the results, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from that northeastern city.

Since the Health Ministry on Saturday announced that the first tissue tests indicated the animal likely had the brain-wasting disease, Italy was in alarm, and the news on Monday that the slaughterhouse supplied McDonald's restaurants in Italy and elsewhere in Europe only heightened worries.

The latest development in the so-called mad cow disease scare, which already has cut into McDonald's 2000 profit according to a report, could dampen consumer appetite for beef even more.

McDonald's di Montezemolo said that since the recent increase in infected cows found in France, customers in Italy, which imports a lot of meat from its European neighbour, were shifting from beef to chicken.

Reuters contributed to this report.



RELATED STORIES:
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January 14, 2001
Italy finds first suspected BSE case
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RELATED SITES:
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