Mad cow disease can't be ruled out in U.S., Canada, EU says

By PAUL AMES, Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium (August 1, 2000 1:16 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Cases of mad cow disease are unlikely to occur in the United States and Canada but cannot be ruled out, a European Union report released Tuesday says.

The report studied the risks of the cattle ailment - bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE - spreading beyond the nine European nations with confirmed cases.

"It is still unlikely, but cannot be excluded that BSE is present in the USA and Canada," said a European Union statement on the report by a team of European scientists.

The European Union's Scientific Steering Committee found that mad cow disease "is uncertain, but likely" in Italy, Spain and Germany, where no domestic cases have been found.

The scientists based their analysis on patterns of live cattle and cattle-feed exports from Britain during the 1980s and 1990s when British herds were hit by an epidemic of the disease blamed on the use of cattle feed that included ground animal remains.

The fatal cattle ailment has been linked to a similar brain-wasting illness in humans, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has killed about 50 people in Britain.

Since the British outbreak, which affected about 180,000 cattle, about 200 cases have been found in Portugal and smaller numbers in Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Switzerland.

The European Union study covered 23 nations. It concluded the occurrence of mad cow disease was "highly unlikely" in the non-EU members Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Norway, New Zealand, Argentina and Paraguay.

But the experts included United States and Canada with EU members Austria, Finland and Sweden, where the presence of infected cattle was unlikely but not excluded.

"These countries are probably free of BSE - but individual BSE cases may nevertheless occur in the future," the report said. "However the development of an epidemic is not likely."

The report said there was a risk infected livestock imported from Britain may have been used in cattle feed in the United States before the introduction of tighter safeguards during the 1990s.

The United States is among several nations with bans on British beef since the early or mid 1990s. The 15-nation European Union dropped a worldwide prohibition of British beef exports last year, after London introduced safety measures.

The EU said separately it was investigating reports that a new BSE-type disease has been detected in sheep in Vermont. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman on July 14 ordered the slaughter of 376 sheep originating from Belgium on suspicion that they may have a mad cow-type disease.