MAD COW DISEASE IS OUT THERE!    STAY INFORMED!

( Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - BSE )

[Mad Cow Disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Scrapie, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), Variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (nvCJD, vCJD)]

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WIRE:12/11/2000 18:11:00 ET

McDonald's Europe sales hit by mad cow disease

OAK BROOK, Ill., Dec 11 (Reuters) - McDonald"s Corp., the world"s largest fast-food chain, said on Monday its sees 2000 profits growing at the low end of forecasts as the beef crisis in Europe scares customers away from hamburgers. The Oak Brook, Ill.-based company said it expects earnings to grow 10 to 11 percent this year, after November sales turned out to be surprisingly strong in the United States and Asia-Pacific region but weaker in Europe, where one-quarter of its food is sold. Europe first began spotting cases of the brain-wasting bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in November, in countries that include Germany, France and Spain. The outbreak has sparked quality control actions by the European Union and concern among consumers who are looking to eat more non-beef products. "Sales in certain European countries were tempered by the decline in consumer confidence regarding the safety of the European beef supply," McDonald"s Chairman and Chief Executive Jack Greenberg said in a statement released early Monday. McDonald"s reported November systemwide sales of $3.2 billion, up 4 percent from the same period last year. This was led by the United States, where sales of Big Macs, French fries and other products rose 7 percent to $1.57 billion. The company said sales in Europe fell 11 percent from November 1999 to $670.6 million. Comparable sales at restaurants open for at least one year in Europe were down in the low single digits on a percentage basis, McDonald"s said. McDonald"s stock closed up 15/16, or 3.23 percent, at $29-15/16, well off the 52-week high of $43-10/16 and above the 52-week low of $26-6/16. Analysts said investors cheered what McDonald"s called a "mid-single digit" percentage rise in same-store sales in the United States and Asia in November. Mad cow disease is also expected to have a short-term impact. "The strong comps are definitely encouraging," said Lehman Bros. restaurant analyst Mitchell Speiser. "We believe that the quick recovery time from consumers regarding mad cow disease is not likely widely reported, which means December could turn out better than investors are looking for," said Salomon Smith Barney analyst Mark Kalinowski in a Monday report. McDonald"s is expected earn $1.49 for full-year 2000, based on a recent poll of analysts by First Call/Thomson Financial. The company had previously forecast earnings-per-share growth of 10 to 15 percent for 2000, excluding the impact of a strong U.S. dollar. It reiterated an estimate that the dollar would shave about 7 cents a share off this year"s profits. McDonald"s lower profit expectations may also stem from shrinking profit margins in Asia where heightened competition has prompted the company to periodically run discount promotions, such as its "weekday value program" in Japan, to spark traffic, said Raymond James analyst Damon Brundage. Year-to-date, McDonald"s said its sales rose 5 percent to $36.8 billion, from $35.1 billion in the year-ago period. McDonald"s, which has operates more than 28,000 restaurants, will have opened about 1,800 new restaurants in 2000 by the end of the year. The number of openings will not be "materially different" in 2001, Greenberg said in a conference call with analysts.

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Dec 16 2000 9:09AM

Belgian Expert Bemoans EU Panic Over BSE

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's top mad cow expert joined others on Saturday in warning that the European Union's latest attempts to stem the spread of the disease smacked of panic and could exacerbate risks to human health.

"The European Union has played panic football under pressure from the consumer," Emmanuel Vanopdenbosch of Belgium's Centre for Veterinary and Agrochemcial Research said in an interview with the newspaper De Standaard.

"Instead of bringing the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) risk under control, they have created an even greater public health problem," Vanopdenbosch, an adviser to the Belgian government and European Commission, said.

In a bid to restore consumer confidence in beef after reports of fresh mad cow cases around the continent, EU farm ministers decided earlier this month to temporarily ban all meat and bone meal in animal feed and to cull older cattle which have not been tested for the disease.

Ministers are due to meet again next Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss how to implement the decisions as well as hold a rare televised debate on food safety issues.

But Vanopdenbosch said the EU's decision would create mountains of waste and be hugely expensive.

He said in Belgium alone the meat and bone meal ban would mean one million tons of animal feed would have to be burned at a cost of some $244.8 million. In addition, tons of carcasses would have to be stored until they could be destroyed.

De Morgen newspaper reported on Saturday that Agriculture minister Jaak Gabriels had estimated the cost of burning unwanted meat and bone meal at seven billion francs. He was to hold talks on the issue with regional farm ministers on Monday, ahead of the EU farm ministers meeting.

"I have seen what happens in England," he said. "Rats, cats, dogs, mice run round eating the meal and spreading it around. A big risk, because cats and rodents are also susceptible to BSE," he said.

Britain has had a ban on meat and bone meal since 1996 and British scientists have already warned about the health problems posed by having to store tons of animal waste.

There is a Europe-wide shortage of hot furnaces which can destroy the mutated brain proteins that cause BSE.

France, which sparked the latest mad cow scare in November following the first confirmed deaths there from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of BSE, said recently it planned to store meat and bone meal at military bases.

Vanopdenbosch said there was practically no risk to humans who continued to eat beef.

"Even if you eat meat from a mad cow, the risk that you will become sick is so small as to be negligible," he said, adding that the chances of getting salmonella poisoning were much greater.

Thirty percent of Belgium's pig farms are contaminated by one sort of salmonella, local media reported this week.

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2nd Mad Cow Case Found in Germany

MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- Officials confirmed a second case of mad cow disease in Germany on Sunday, and were investigating animals from other herds in southern Bavaria state with initial positive results.

Bavaria's Health Ministry confirmed the disease in an animal near the city of Oberallgau. The cow, born in 1995 and one of a herd of 80 animals, was destroyed Wednesday after the initial positive result.

Further tests confirmed the animal had bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease. The entire herd will now be slaughtered and their brains examined for further signs of the disease.

Europeans have been gripped in a new wave of panic over mad cow, fearing the spread of a human form of the fatal brain-destroying ailment, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Officials are also looking at how the animals were fed, as contaminated bone and animal meal in cattle feed are believed to cause mad cow disease.

The first confirmed case of the disease in Germany was discovered last month, adding the country to the list in Europe to where BSE has spread.

Two other animals in Bavaria have also tested positive in initial testing and the herds are being isolated as further investigation continues.

Britain ignited Europe's mad cow scare when the disease was first identified there in 1995, and infected cows have also recently been discovered in France and Spain. The European Union has passed restrictions on feeding practices to stem the spread of BSE.

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Friday, 15 December 2000 15:31 (ET)

Russian Duma rejects meat import ban

MOSCOW, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, Friday rejected a proposal to ban all imports of meat and related products from European Union states where bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) is spreading.

The motion received 181 votes, short of the 226 vote minimum required to accept the ban, which had been backed by nationalist, Communist and Agrarian Party legislators.

Russia's Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeyev said the situation was under control and that a ban on imports of European meat products was uncalled for.

Several East European countries have over the past two weeks banned meat imports from France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands after reports that mad cow cases had been found there.

While an E.U.-wide import ban has been avoided for now, Russia has imposed a ban on meat imports from Britain, Portugal, Switzerland and parts of France, Belgium and Ireland as a temporary measure.

The bid to ban meat imports came as newspapers reported that Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow disease, had struck in northern Russia, killing a man in Murmansk.

The young victim was suspected to have contracted the disease after eating imported meat.

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WIRE:12/17/2000 12:23:00 ET

Spain intervenes to help beef sector

MADRID, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Spain"s ministry of agriculture has agreed to buy 40,000 tonnes of beef to shore up a sector whose sales have fallen between 30 and 40 percent amid growing fears of mad cow disease, El Pais newspaper reported on Sunday.

In a meeting with industry representatives on Saturday the government also pledged to buy from animal feed producers 15,000 tonnes of feed containing animal remains, following a decision by the European Union to ban such products on December 4, El Pais reported, citing Spain"s Under-secretary for Agriculture Manuel Lamela.

The government has promised to pay the producers 35 pesetas ($0.189) per kilogram for the feed, it said. Reports of madcow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), spreading in the European Union has led to a sharp fall in beef sales across the EU.

According to Spain"s National Association of Beef Producers the losses in the Spanish sector alone reached 9.6 billion pesetas ($51.79 million) in just one month, the report said. Earlier this month, Spain confirmed its second case of mad cow disease in the northwestern Galicia region.

BSE first hit the headlines in Britain in 1986, with a crisis reaching fever pitch a decade later after scientists said they believed there was a link between madcow disease and its human equivalent, which has killed more than 80 Britons.

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US bans UK bone meal imports ... on 6 Dec 00

12/06/2000 UK-USDA internal memo announcing 6 Dec 00 effective date for ban on UK imports

from Karen A James, DVM Assistant Director TTS, NCIE, VS

VS = USDA Veterinary Services..PPQ = USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine..NCIE = National Center for Import/Export

Subject: Alert to PPQ regarding VS action regarding BSE

Sensitivity: Personal

Area Veterinarian In Charge

The message below was sent to PPQ. It concerns VS's actions regarding the

BSE situation in the EU. If you have any questions please feel free to

contact Dr.James Asst. Director TTS, NCIE or Dr. Donna Malloy, TTS, NCIE.

From KAREN A JAMES, DVM

Assistant Director TTS, NCIE, VS

12/06/2000

Subject: Alert to PPQ regarding VS action regarding BSE

To:VS AHP Chiefs, VS Management Team, VSAreas CR, VSAreas NR, VSAreas SER,VSAreas WR VS is requesting PPQ to place a hold on all imports of rendered products such as meat & bone meal (MBM), bone meal, meat meal, blood meal, tankage, fat, offal, tallow and any product containing such, regardless of species of origin which originate directly from Europe or any country designated to be infected with BSE or was rendered/processed in Europe or other BSE affected country plants because of the risk of cross contamination in plants.

The basis of this recommendation is the finding by the EU that feed of nonruminant origin has been cross-contaminated with the BSE agent. VS is in the process of drafting an interim rule that will be completed in a few days to prohibit the above products from BSE affected countries.

The Effective Date of this prohibition is today, Wednesday, December 6, 2000. If you have any questions please contact Dr. Donna Malloy at 734-3277.

Comment (webmaster): Better late than never. The USDA fears being dragged into the spreading European BSE problem and has upped the ante, if belatedly, in reducing exposure risk and disease amplification potential in US livestock. Prior USDA half-measures halted live imports and forbade rendered ruminant feeding (cow-to-cow or sheep-to-cow), though not cow-to-pig or cow-to-chicken and then back to cow. Cross-contamination of feed is hardly news; regulators have been aware of its risks for over a decade.

USDA, according to this official internal memo, has banned effective 6 Dec 00 on "all imports of rendered products such as meat & bone meal (MBM), bone meal, meat meal, blood meal, tankage, fat, offal, tallow and any product containing such, regardless of species of origin which originate directly from Europe or any country designated to be infected with BSE or was rendered/processed in Europe or other BSE affected country plants because of the risk of cross contamination in plants."

It thus seems that it was ok to import these items until 5 Dec 00. The official USDA memo above seems to answer the question once and for all as to whether the US has had a comprehensive ban in place for the above-mentioned items during 1985-2000: no.

Ironically, the banned items likely have less infectivity now than they did during the peak BSE years when importation was at full swing. This is locking the barn door after the horse is gone.

This raises the question if USDA plans to specifically reveal how much was imported in each category over the last 15 years, who or what consumed it with what level of follow-up testing, and whether they now plan to call in or feed out warehoused stocks and accept or turn away tankage etc. in ships already en route.

While it might well be assumed that a few mega-tonnes of the above mentioned items from the UK would bring in non-zero amounts of BSE infectivity, it doesn't follow that a single livestock or person became ill from it, much less that BSE has become entrenched here. However, USDA has focused for 15 years on high profile busts of a handful of live cow and sheep imports while looking away from the big picture of infectivity imports.

While the action taken here surely deserves support, in the webmaster's opinion it was better done 15 years back if the goal was to protect US producers and consumers from risk of BSE importation. A ban taken on 6 Dec 00 looks simply like a reaction to the panic in Europe. How it is going to reassure anyone in Europe about US safety measures in the short term?

Is this about risk reduction, or risk perception reduction, or just posturing for the benefit of export markets?

Source: www.mad-cow.org