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January 5. 2001                                                                                       
European beef imports suspended >From AAP 05jan01 16:30 (AEDT) IMPORTS of all beef and beef products from Europe into Australia and New Zealand will be suspended from next Monday in the wake of the mad cow scare, the federal government said today. The ban applies to products from 30 countries.

The move came as the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) announced it would take steps to safeguard the food supply against the effects of the deadly variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

ANZFA managing director Ian Lindemayer said the authority would examine
possible amendments to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code to
ensure imports of beef and beef products were free of the animal version of
the disease - bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

"We have written to major retail organisations asking them to identify
processed beef products from Europe and to remove them from shelves as soon
as possible as a precaution," Mr Lindenmayer said.

In the meantime, Mr Lindenmayer said, consumers should check labels on any
imported foods and discard corned beef, luncheon meat, frankfurters and
other products which contained beef with a European country of origin.

"Australia and New Zealand have one of the safest food supplies in the world
and the current steps are intended to keep it that way."

Agriculture and Forestry Minister Warren Truss also moved to reassure
consumers of the safety of Australian beef and beef products.

"Australia is one of only five countries in the world recognised as being
free from BSE in their cattle," Mr Truss said. "Australian beef and beef products are totally safe."

Australia's chief medical officer Professor Richard Smallwood said foods
containing British beef had been banned from importation into Australia
since 1996 following concerns about the spread of the disease.

"It is becoming clearer now that more countries in Europe may be affected by
BSE in their cattle," Professor Smallwood said.  "The risk to the health of Australians from the consumption of these products is extremely small.  However, we need to keep one step ahead of the BSE/vCJD situation that is causing great concern in the UK and the rest of Europe."

The ban affects all beef goods from 30 European countries including Belgium,
Denmark, France and Germany.  It could be extended to bovine-derived medical and beauty products.

The ban on beef and beef products follows a ban on blood donors who spent
six months or more in England between 1980 and 1996.

Friday, 22 December, 2000, 19:37 GMT   BBC News OnineBSE 'Manslaughter' charge threatens  ministers

French relatives want ministers to stand trial
UK and French ministers could be charged with manslaughter over deaths linked to mad cow disease. Prosecutors in Paris have started preliminary investigations into whether to bring charges, following a lawsuit filed last month by families of two French victims of the brain-wasting human version of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

The families want manslaughter charges brought against British officials for allowing the export of suspect animal feed after banning it at home in 1989 - and against French officials for not stopping it.

The panic over BSE has spread across Europe

A preliminary investigation into the French lawsuits is to be led by a Paris judge, Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy, who made her name examining charges against ministers and officials linked to the use of Aids-contaminated blood in transfusions in the 1980s.

The blood scandal, which has drawn comparisons with the mad cow crisis, ended with the trial of three ministers, including former prime minister Laurent Fabius, early last year. He was acquitted.

In October, Lord Phillips' report of the UK BSE inquiry criticised successive government ministers for repeatedly misleading the public about the threat to human health posed by mad cow disease.

'Heavy responsibility'
A UK spokesman pointed out on Friday that the report had decided there was "no criminal case to answer".

But in their writ the French families said that Britain bore a heavy responsibility for "authorising the mass export of animal meal, which they recognise as being the main source of contamination".

Several court cases over mad cow disease have begun in the UK, where more than 80 people have contracted vCJD, but they focus on charges of negligence rather than manslaughter, a charge more difficult to prove.

The French lawsuits deal with the deaths of 27-year-old man in 1996, and a women who died at the age of 36 last February.

More cases of BSE are expected in Germany
  Concern over BSE has sparked consumer panic in France, prompting the government to ban meat and bone meal feed, take T-bone steaks off restaurant menus and institute a sweeping programme of health tests for cattle.

Many schools have banned beef from their cafeterias.

The scare, reminiscent of Britain's mad cow crisis in the mid-1990s, broke out in October after three French supermarket chains removed beef from their shelves over fears it might have come from herds where a contaminated cow was found.

The European Union reacted to the growing anxiety earlier this month by ordering a blanket six-month ban on meat and bone meal in all animal feed, and calling for tests on all cattle older than 30 months from next July.

Unilateral bans
The Paris legal move came as the European Commission threatened to ban some German sausages because of fears they may be contaminated with BSE.

European Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne said: "My overriding concern is that consumers in other EU member states are afforded an equal level of protection as consumers in Germany."

German officials had claimed that the country's cattle were free from BSE - until the first case in a German-born cow was announced on 24 November.

Two new cases of BSE in Germany have now been confirmed, bringing the total to five, and more are now expected.

Several European countries have already slapped unilateral bans on German beef and they were joined on Thursday by Germany's neighbour, Austria - one of the few remaining EU countries to be free of BSE.

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