EU animal health experts have raised the minimum age for testing cattle for mad cow disease in the EU's 15 'older' countries to 48 months, given fewer cases of the brain-wasting virus, the EU executive said today.
At present, all healthy slaughtered cattle aged above 30 months and all cattle above 24 months deemed to be at risk of catching bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) must be tested.
Experts have now agreed that the new age limit for BSE testing of healthy slaughtered and at-risk cattle will be 48 months, the European Commission said in a statement.
Assuming a green light from the European Parliament, that revised rule should come into effect in January 2009.
Numbers of positive BSE cases detected in the EU have fallen significantly the past few years, while the age of those positive cases has steadily increased, the Commission says.
The older testing age will only apply to the 15 countries that were EU members before the bloc's last major enlargement in 2004 since they had complied with four criteria, it said.
For at least six years, these countries had a total ban on using animal proteins in feed for farmed animals, conducted comprehensive BSE testing for at least six years, used a full traceability and animal-ID system for six years, and had seen a "favourable" BSE situation in terms of case numbers, it said.
Some of the EU's newer member countries had also made efforts to comply with these criteria in the years before they joined the EU, the Commission said, meaning that they might soon be able to apply the raised animal testing age, it said.
Reuters