HEALTH-SPAIN: Seven Arrested in ‘Mad Cow’ Disease Scare

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Feb 8 2001 (IPS) - Seven individuals were arrested in Spain after 4,634 breaches of animal health regulations were detected in the inspections carried out as a result of the crisis caused by the appearance of cases of “mad cow” disease in Spain, the Natural Protection Service (Seprona) reported Thursday.

The infractions were documented from Dec 19 – when the crisis broke out with the first reported case of the disease in Spain – to Jan 31, said General Manuel Silos Pavón, the head of Seprona, a body that answers to the Civil Guard, Spain’s militarised police.

In addition, 500 tonnes of fodder containing animal meal – which has been banned in Spain – were seized, and three clandestine slaughterhouses were discovered, while charges were filed against several of the detainees.

While the head of Seprona gave a press conference Thursday, around 30,000 farmers protested outside the Agriculture Ministry in downtown Madrid, despite the cold, the strong winds and heavy rain.

Leading the demonstration, alongside the banners of the stockbreeders associations that called the protest, was a group of cattle headed by a six-year-old cow, ‘Charo’, whose owner insisted on clarifying: “she is not mad, she’s perfectly sane.”

The president of the National Association of Cattle Producers, Jesús González, said outside the ministry that sales of beef had plunged by 90 percent since Dec 19, when the first case of “mad cow” disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), was reported in Spain.

González said authorities had forgotten about stockbreeders in the crisis. He complained that while cattle breeders supported the adoption of health measures, in order to guarantee consumer safety, they would not be able to absorb the losses.

Stockbreeders fed their animals with fodder that “someone authorised,” stressed López – alluding to the government’s responsibility in the crisis.

Last week, former European Union commissioner on development and humanitarian aid Ema Bonino publicly stated that it was the governments themselves that had blocked a regulation approved by the EU in 1997.

The regulation stipulated that organs that could lead to BSE infection were to be eliminated at the time of slaughter. However, Bonino pointed out that the measure was unpopular among stockbreeders and retailers, and that a majority of EU governments joined together and kept it from going into effect until October 2000.

López said the current crisis in Spain should be treated as a state problem, the solution of which would require a political agreement on the creation of a public fund to keep stockbreeders from falling into bankruptcy – the main demand of the protesters.

At least 757 patients were treated in 1997 with a medicine contaminated by blood from British donors suffering from the fatal Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), which is caused by the consumption of beef infected with BSE, according to information gathered by the Madrid daily El Mundo in 27 hospitals throughout Spain.

One of the patients is a little girl who was four years old in 1997.

She is one of the 35 patients whose case has gone to the courts after they sued for being treated with the contaminated medicine and for not being informed that the manufacturer of the product had recommended that the hospitals withdraw it from use.

It was reported that back in 1996 and 1997, Spain imported consignments of the drug Amerscan Pulmonate II that was contaminated with the blood of British donors infected with CJD.

Amerscan Pulmonate II is used to diagnose pulmonary thromboembolism – that is, to determine whether blood is flowing properly to the lungs.

No information is available on whether any of the 757 people treated with the drug in question have actually contracted CJD.

Creutzfeld-Jakob disease was extremely rare, and was only reported in people over the age of 55 until 1996, when the connection with BSE was first detected in Britain. Since then, a total of 81 people in that country have died of CJD.

The initial symptoms include tremors, loss of memory and balance, hallucinations and weakness. Patients rapidly progress to a state in which they can neither walk nor talk.

BSE, attributed to the use of cattle fodder containing high risk materials like the nervous systems and carcases of animals, is one of a group of infectious diseases about which little is known, and which affect both humans and animals.

Like scrapie, the disease’s equivalent in sheep, BSE is caused by neither a virus nor a bacteria, but by a “prion” protein that scientists believe produces a slow biochemical reaction that modifies the protein molecules in the brain.

The brain gradually takes on the consistency of a sponge, and the end result is death. The “prion” proteins apparently provoke no immune response in the victims, are extremely stable, and can withstand extreme temperatures, radiation or antiseptics that would kill other infectious agents.

While five new cases have brought the total number of BSE- infected cattle reported in Spain to 19, concern has also spread to sheep breeders, even though no case of scrapie has been documented in this country.

“Now we have to spend more on veterinarians, calling one to certify the health of each animal sold, while we have had to replace the fodder with which we complete the animals’ diets,” Máximo López, a sheep rancher in the east-central province of Guadalajara, told IPS.

Besides the grains used to complement the diets of animals put out to graze, stockbreeders use fodder prepared with animal meal “because when they buy our animals, the slaughterhouses and butchers do not kill them immediately, but slaughter them as needed.” Meanwhile, the animals, held in stockyards, are fed on rations.

“That is why they urge us to feed them with rations including animal meal as soon as the lambs are weaned, in order for them to get used to eating the fodder,” explained López.

The starter feed fed to young livestock is an industrially prepared mix which includes barley as well as bonemeal. But when the mad cow disease scare hit Spain late last year, the use of fodder containing animal meal was banned.

A veterinarian with more than 30 years of experience, Manuel Mármol, was unexpectedly removed as adviser to the stockbreeders association for objecting to a government recommendation that fodder containing animal meal that was prohibited in Spain be exported to Latin America and Africa, the director of the SER radio station, Daniel Gavela, reported Wednesday.

The ban on animal meal has posed a number of problems: the elimination of existing fodder, the incineration of animal waste products like carcases in butchershops and slaughterhouses, the replacement of feed containing animal meal with strictly vegetable- based rations, and the indemnification of stockbreeders for the losses incurred in putting down infected animals.

A slump in beef sales has compounded the losses caused by the need to find alternative feed to replace the animal meal-based fodder, and by the slaughter of cattle over the age of 30 months.

However, demand has not only fallen for beef produced in Spain, but for beef imported from countries free of BSE, like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, as well.

The fall in sales of beef and a smaller drop in sales of lamb, as well as statements by representatives of consumer groups, indicate that many people in Spain have decided to play it safe and stick to fish and vegetables instead.