Five million carcasses and counting

By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain, ground zero for Europe's mad cow crisis, has waged a determined campaign to eradicate the disease.

The country whose penchant for roast beef is seen as second to none has slaughtered 4.8 million cows since April 1996 -- a rate that amounts to about 1 million animals a year.

The destruction, under the government-run "Over Thirty Month Scheme" (OTMS), reflects UK scientists' findings, first publicised in 1996, that the fatal disease may be transmittable from cows to humans.

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The scheme involves the systematic slaughter, grinding down, or "rendering," and burning of Britain's older cattle. The last part of this process occurs at special incineration plants contracted for the purpose.

The scheme is part of the UK's multi-pronged approach, which also involves random testing of cattle and the instant elimination of any cows that show clinical signs of BSE.

All cattle over 30 months of age are barred from entering the human food chain, save for a small number that are exempt under a special "beef assurance scheme" that carries stringent screening criteria.

Under OTMS, farmers have the right to decide when and whether to present their cows for slaughter, according to the Intervention Board, which administers the program.

Most cattle submitted for slaughter under OTMS are dairy cows at the end of their natural working life, the board says, although bulls, beef steers and heifers are also accepted.

Before Britain introduced OTMS, older cows would often be accepted into the human food chain as lesser cuts of meat, on the assumption that beef quality generally deteriorates with age.

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With the BSE crisis, however, age has become a life-or-death liability that government ministers can ill afford to ignore. OTMS offers farmers a chance to get compensation for older cows for which there is no longer any market in Europe. British farmers have received �1.6 billion ($2.3 billion) under the program so far.

Cattle displaying signs of BSE -- regardless of their age -- are ineligible for destruction under OTMS. They are sent for instant cremation under separate disposal arrangements.

The telltale symptoms of mad cow disease -- staggering, foaming at the mouth, disorientation -- typically appear in older cows, though younger animals are not immune.

Under Britain's testing regimes, 1,870 cases of suspected BSE were discovered last year. Of those, 1,327 cattle were confirmed to have the disease. Only 38 suspected cases have been uncovered so far this year.

Britain is considering whether to join a broader EU testing program that went into effect January 1.

Looking for tallow buyers

The rendering of cattle under OTMS has yielded two by-products: meat-and-bone meal, and tallow, or fat, both of which must be incinerated.

Due to its low sulphur content, tallow combusts easily, making it an ideal fuel. Thirty potential buyers have expressed interest in more than 200,000 metric tons of tallow currently in storage, though no cash has changed hands. Tallow cannot be exported outside the UK. Its use in the UK is governed by strict rules on storage, transport and disposal.

Meat-and-bone meal has been an ingredient in animal feed, including cattle feed, which is how BSE is thought to have spread. Britain banned meat-and-bone meal in all animal feed in 1996 -- four years before the EU followed suit in a similar directive adopted last December.

However, when Britain introduced OTMS five years ago, the country had no incineration plants able to handle large volumes of meat-and-bone meal.

Britain has since used one small-scale facility and three large-scale incinerators to cremate 134,000 metric tons of meat-and-bone meal, according to Penny Corkish, an Intervention Board spokeswoman.

But an additional 456,000 metric tons of such meal await cremation at more than a dozen storage sites throughout the UK.

The country is aiming to incinerate 60 percent of that backlog by March 2002, Corkish said, with the balance to be burned by 2004.