Mad Cow disease?
 

Has mad cow disease been eliminated in UK <BR>beef or are you still at risk if you eat the beef?

It is no longer a cause for concern.

Hello Wes, always an answer for everyone! Do you do this for a living?!!!

In the export/import of British beef, only France maintains an embargo. All other nations allow its importation and consumption.

WHY has the risk gone away? Have British farmers changed their farming practices, or is everyone assuming it is no longer a problem because no one has become ill recently (assuming even that is true)? Why is France still banning British beef?

I am not a scientist. My sources: "The Economist, of London" and "The London Daily Telegraph." If I could explain the French, I would.

My sister and her husband live and London and since the MCD scare they haven't had any meat in the U.K. - they still persist in a fish/chicken diet.

Although I am not an expert I understand that Britian has discontinued the practice of using ruminant-derived animal feed. <BR> <BR>France continues to ban British beef-I am not sure why but they offer lots of scientific proof that British beef is dangerous. Paradoxically, I just read in the paper that although cases of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) have declined drastically in the UK, they are slowly increasing in France. Let me preface that by saying that there were far more cases to begin with in Britain.

Some years ago, there was a big scandal in France. Many hemophiliacs got AIDS through contaminated blood transfusions, and this was handled by a government agency. The prime minister of that time was tried in court and the health minister was declared partially guilty. Since then health and food safety is a sensitive subject in France. <BR>Actually, Germany has not officially maintained the ban on british food but it is delaying as much as possible the practical lifting of this ban. <BR>And in Switzerland, the number of BSE has also increased because they use more efficient testing. <BR>As for the number of BSE cases, I think it went from 4000/year down to 1000/year in UK and it's up to around 70/year in France. <BR>As far as I know, less than 5 people died of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease induced by BSE in France, and less than 30 in UK. Although it may increase in coming years, it's still a smnall number compared to other diseases or car accidents. <BR>BTW, I eat beef regularly.

France is still banning beef for purely political reasons and is being sued in the European courts for this. <BR> <BR>America refuses to accept British beef but there is no court in which America can be sued (except perhaps the WTO which is run for the benefit of American corporations anyway)

The whole thing is political, the french gov. are at the merci (!) of their farmers..........mind you it serves them right feeding cows on sheeps brains - please note this was English beef, not Northern Irish or Scottish.(In Scotland the sheeps brains are retained for use in haggis-in-a-tube on the grounds that tourists are already mad) <BR>The French have been recently discovered to have been feeding their cattle on merde (honest!) - you can imagine what the UK tabloids made of that! <BR>The French respond by saying that in France they only make the ANIMALS eat merde, whereas in England.....

Oooh merde-slinging first thing in the morning; I like it. <BR> <BR>Forgot all about the MCD - in February I ate beef while in London and, so far, no ill effects, but, then, it'd be sort of hard to tell. <BR> <BR>As for French farmers and their protectionist attitudes: I have a very funny postcard entitled "French Wine Growers Greet This Year's Italian Wine Imports"...you can, with little imagination, picture the illustration. <BR> <BR>

Cows are suspected to contract BSE from unspeakable parts of other animals ground up into their feed. This practice is now banned. There was a programme of wholesale destruction of herds and British beef finding its way to the counters now comes from herds of animals felt to be too young to have been exposed to the disease. For some further time beef on the bone was banned and this ban has now been lifted. This is good news as in my opinion rib of beef cooked without bone is like a gin and tonic without lemon. I continued to eat beef throughout the crisis hopefully without ill effect, errm what were talking about? <BR> <BR>The French still ban British beef largely on the same political basis on which they burn British lamb carcasses. Don't be fooled by the channel tunnel, to some degree the British and French have been at war since the middle ages and nothing much has changed :-) <BR> <BR>Favourite joke for a couple of days during the crisis: Two cows chatting in a field, one says 'Terrible thing this BSE' The other says 'Yes, good job it doesn't affect us camels!' <BR> <BR>