Mad Cow Fears Ripple Through France

by Julio Godoy

The phenomenon has led restaurants to remove all beef-based dishes from the menu and public schools throughout France have stopped serving beef in children's lunches at the behest of worried parents.

Beef sales have tumbled by an estimated 20 to 50 percent. Some slaughterhouses in the Brittany region, on the Atlantic coast, report a 70 percent drop in demand for the meat.

The principal farmers' union resolved November 7 to pull from the market all beef originating from animals born before July 15, 1996, representing more than a million head, or 5 percent of France's total herd.

On that date, fear washed over Great Britain as officials confirmed the link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- or mad cow disease -- and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans who consumed beef.

The latest confirmed case of Creutzfeld-Jakob is a 19-year-old man named Arnaud, from Paris, whose parents describe him as a "hamburger lover." He has suffered the symptoms of the disease since November 1999.

Arnaud's condition was revealed on Nov. 6 on French television, which showed images of him similar to those made public in late October on British television of Zoe, a girl who died from the disease Oct. 28.

Creutzfeld-Jakob is extremely rare worldwide, and prior to 1996 was generally limited to people over 55.

Its initial symptoms include trembling, nervousness, memory loss, hallucinations, loss of balance and weakness. The disease's victims rapidly lose their ability to walk or talk.

Arnaud's mother said on French TV channel M6 that he had turned "from an energetic and lively youth into a vegetable." His father, meanwhile, accused the medical staff handling the case and government authorities of "hiding the truth."

"The big economic interests at stake prevent transparency in France about the scope of the epidemic," he stated.

Government statistics about the disease are not reliable, according to specialists, because records from 18 months in 1997 and 1998 were not updated as a result of a prolonged strike among the paramedical personnel entrusted with the task.

"France must prepare to confront dozens of cases of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease," Health Minister Dominique Gillot told Le Parisien newspaper yesterday. In Britain, official data indicates that 81 people have died from the illness.

The government is considering banning animal-based feed for all livestock.

Health authorities have also suggested using alternative cuts of beef in order to prevent the bones, the possible vectors of the protein responsible for transmitting mad cow disease to humans, from being sold to the public

The public's distrust became widespread over recent weeks, following the discovery in late October that beef coming from diseased animals had been sold illegally on the French market.

In addition, since the beginning of this year, 86 cases of infected cows have been reported, three times more than last year, bringing the country's total mad cow cases to 130.

The route of infection of those cows is still unknown, given that France banned the use of animal-based livestock feed in 1990.

As a result, there is growing concern that the disease could be transmitted from a mother to her young through her milk, or even between species, as animal-based feed is still authorized as a supplement for fish and birds.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, is one of the few infectious diseases known that affects both humans and animals.

The human and animal variants are not caused by virus or bacteria, but by an agent known as "prion" protein, which is believed to produce a slow biochemical reaction that changes the protein molecules of the brain.

The molecular alterations give the brain the consistency of a sponge, a process that is always fatal.

"Prions" do not appear to cause any sort of immune response in the victims and are very stable, resisting extreme temperatures, radiation and antiseptics that would kill other infectious agents.

France is the only member of the European Union that maintains an embargo on beef imports from Great Britain. The other members of the bloc agreed to drop the import restrictions after a decision made by the European Commission, the EU's executive body, in August 1999.

Despite the embargo, the French police determined that at least 3,200 tons of beef and tens of thousands of tons of animal-based feed originating in Britain were sold illegally in France.

The police force created a special division, known as "the mad cow unit," to investigate the illicit sales, and has uncovered an international network trafficking in British meat. The primary suspect as head of the network is Belgian entrepreneur Rudy Decock.

Lt. Col. Pierre Patin, chief of the special unit, said there is an international arrest warrant hanging over Decock, though he continues to live at large in the Belgian resort city of Knokke, north of Bruges.

"Decock has spent a couple of days under arrest, but Belgian legal authorities always let him go," Patin said. The French police believe Decock even obtained subsidies from the European Commission totalling some $3 million.

The mad cow unit also established that the trafficking network exported British meat to developing countries, primarily Egypt and west African nations, and to Russia.

"British beef is transported illegally to Belgium, where through fraudulent means it is 'redeclared' Belgian-produced beef. With new documentation, the meat is then transported to the Netherlands and to France, and from here to Africa and Russia," affirmed Patin.