The EU beef management committee meets tomorrow to consider compensation for farmers hit by the BSE problem. Crisis management of the past week has had an understandable, but potentially dangerous, preoccupation with trade and economic impacts. The health of consumers, however, seems a lesser consideration. There is no discernible input from the council of health ministers with that vital perspective in focus. The EU commissioner for health and consumer protection, Mr David Byrne, cuts a lone figure, manning that front.
There are gaps already appearing in the announced measures and failure to see the bigger picture. The EU's own expert group, the Joint Research Council, warns that none of the three BSE tests on the market is 100 per cent accurate in detecting BSE in cattle incubating the disease but showing no symptoms. They were never validated to screen meat as safe. The Irish Enfer test is fulfilling an important role in detecting prions in suspect or fallen animals but was not designed for mass screening. The bottom line should be: are these measures what are required to protect consumers? Are they carefully designed to eliminate the age-groups likely to be harbouring the BSE agent, and not a crude way of getting surplus beef off the market?
At home, the head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Dr Patrick Wall, has been a lone voice in saying the consumer issue is not being sufficiently addressed. Early this year, Dr Wall warned that BSE was about to cause tremors through mainland Europe because countries were far too slow in introducing Meat and Bone Meal (MBM) controls - the most likely source of BSE - compared to Britain and Ireland. They were less than assiduous in looking for BSE in their own herds, and when they improved checks, they found it at much higher levels. Moreover some countries, notably Belgium, had been exporting MBM to non-EU countries. Infection, after all, can be transmitted in a fist of feed. Dr Wall's latest chilling prediction is that BSE will soon assume a world impact. Small indicators are already there; one suspect case of vCJD (the human form of BSE) has appeared in Russia and two in Hong Kong.
With the right choices, there is a possibililty of Ireland becoming BSE-free, farmers being adequately compensated at pre-crisis price levels, and saving our beef industry. Then we will be able to market product with a clean bill of health as the world becomes sensitized to BSE. That way, Irish consumers win, our farmers win and so do their customers.