Mad Cow frenzy strikes Italy

ROME, Italy -- Italy has become the latest European country to be struck by mad cow frenzy after suffering its first case of the disease since 1994.

Consumers across the country shunned butchers' shops and long queues formed outside fishmongers.

Cattle farmers staged a protest at the farm near Brescia where the cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) came from.

Even the Pope got into the act. At the Vatican on Wednesday, Pope John Paul II offered words of solidarity for cattle raisers hurt by the crisis.

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"In this situation of serious hardship, to all the honest cattle raisers goes my expression of spiritual closeness," the pope said during his weekly public audience.

Sandro Belardinelli, a butcher-turned-fishmonger at a market in Rome's central Monti neighbourhood, told a radio station: "No-one buys meat anymore so I have started selling fish."

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On Wednesday, EU Commission President Romano Prodi told Italian state television that "no expense must be spared" to keep the crisis under control and reassure consumers.

Health Minister Umberto Veronesi said in an address to parliament: "This case has alarmed us but we have to put it in context.

"We have less incidence of the disease than other European countries and meat today is much safer than it was 10 years ago.

"Our two main objectives are to eradicate the disease and to protect the health of Italian citizens," he said.

The minister, a cancer specialist, said it would not be possible to have a clear idea on how widespread the problem was until sample testing was carried out on 50,000 cows for BSE.

Many scientists believe that humans who catch new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of BSE, do so as a result of eating BSE-infected beef. More than 80 people in Britain and three in France have so far died of vCJD.

The infected meat was discovered in a slaughterhouse owned by a company that supplies McDonald's in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

Near Brescia, cattle farmers drove some 20 tractors to the gates of the farm where the infected cow lived and vowed to block officials from killing the rest of the herd -- a move Veronesi said would be carried out.

The farmers say there is no need to destroy the entire herd of about190 head owned by the Greci family before testing that would determine if they are infected.

"They want to make me a scapegoat," Greci told the newspaper Corriere della Sera. "I have always bred my cattle in a healthy way, following all the rules."

Greci stands to lose about 1 billion lire ($486,000) if his stock is destroyed, the newspaper said. Veronesi said Wednesday that he would be reimbursed.

Italian and European Union regulations require the destruction of all animals that had contact with an infected cow.

"The newborn cows do not have BSE. It is absurd to kill them," Aldo Cipriano, head of the area's farmers union, said.

"We must not get too alarmist about this. We must tell consumers that the meat that they eat ... is guaranteed," he said.

While Italian butchers and cattle farmers were suffering, their counterparts in Austria were breathing a big sigh of relief after tests on an animal suspected of having mad cow disease proved negative.

Thus the country's status as one of the few in Europe without a reported case was preserved.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.