Italy plans BSE crackdown


BSE fears are sweeping Europe

ROME, Italy -- Ministers in Italy are to meet on Tuesday to pass a decree outlining urgent measures to destroy high-risk animals and animal feed in order to prevent the spread of mad cow disease.

And Germany is to draw up a new set of measures to combat BSE following an inter-departmental row among ministers about plans announced last week.

The developments in Italy and Germany came as French beef industry unions blocked traffic at toll booths in Rennes, Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris in protest at stringent new tests for mad cow disease.

The A13 and A1 roads near Paris were among those blocked by slaughterhouse owners, meat transporters and other professionals who say the ambitious plan to screen 20,000 animals every week is hurting the industry.

IN-DEPTH

Mad cow disease: Counting the cost


•	The cross-species killer
•	What's off the menu?
•	EU beef consumption
•	BSE cases in Europe
•	Geographical BSE risk
•	One family's nightmare
•	Timeline: Crisis unfolds
•	Recent news
•	Audio/video archive
•	Message board
•	Related sites

Meanwhile in Italy, a statement from the office of Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said the new decree, promoted by the agriculture ministry, would be the first item on the agenda at the meeting.

Italy has ordered meat-based animal feed and leftovers of slaughtered cows to be burned in a bid to prevent the brain-wasting disease from spreading.

Two confirmed cased of BSE were detected in Italy in 1994, involving British cattle imported to Sicily.

The move comes as German ministers said they would be drawing up a new plan aimed at tackling mad cow disease following an inter-departmental row.

In a joint paper, the agriculture and environment ministries published a batch of reform proposals last Thursday for the German farm sector, including 500 million marks ($240 million) investment in ecological farming practices.

But Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke, himself a farmer who is sceptical about the cost of revamping existing cattle rearing practices, said the paper did not have his approval and penned a separate plan that contained no such investment offers.

A spokeswoman for Funke said it had now been decided to draw up new proposals altogether.

Funke was criticised at the weekend after a newspaper reported that a top zoology professor had informed him last January that a BSE victim had been found in Germany more than a decade ago.

The minister nevertheless insisted the country was BSE-free until the first officially acknowledged case in November.

No German cases have been confirmed of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the disease in humans linked to BSE and which has killed over 80 people, mainly in Britain.

Reuters contributed to this report.