ENVIRONMENT-SPAIN: Incineration of Cattle Jeopardises Vultures

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Mar 1 2001 (IPS) - Mad cow disease and outbreaks of foot-and- mouth disease, which are sowing panic in Europe, are indirectly threatening the survival of the region’s carrion-eating birds like vultures and royal eagles, most of which live in Spain, warn environmentalists.

The incineration of the carcases of animals slaughtered due to mad cow disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and foot- and-mouth disease will cause serious environmental imbalances in the European Union (EU), the secretary-general of the Spanish non- governmental group Ecologists in Action, Theo Oberhuber, told IPS.

Among EU norms that went into effect Thursday is the mandatory incineration of all animal carcases that are not destined for consumption.

In Europe, the scare over BSE and foot-and-mouth disease is no longer only affecting cows and sheep. It was reported Wednesday that 540 pigs that Spain imported from Britain would be slaughtered and incinerated, because they came from an area affected by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

Oberhuber said 15 percent of animal carcases, equivalent to around 10,000 tonnes a year, are eliminated in an “efficient and environmentally-correct manner” by carrion-feeding birds, thus preventing potential environmental and public health problems.

But if all animal carcases are incinerated, “the populations of carrion-feeders will be put in jeopardy, because dead livestock accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the diet of those species,” he underlined.

Spain is home to the lion’s share of Europe’s carrion-eating birds: 98 percent of the region’s black vultures, 80 percent of the egyptian vultures, 80 percent of the bearded vultures, 90 percent of the griffon vultures, half of the royal eagles and all of the Spanish imperial eagles.

This week, Ecologists in Action set up a working group to study the problem, while demanding urgent norms “legalising” carrion- feeders as one of the accepted forms of elimination of dead animals, as long as the necessary health guarantees are in place.

The group also pointed to the need to create a national network of feeding sites for vultures and other carrion-eaters, coordinated and adapted to the specific needs of the species in each area.

In addition, the environmentalists demanded that the carcases of free range livestock be allowed to disintegrate in nature, as long as it posed no health risk.

The Spanish working group is made up of delegates of Ecologists in Action, the Association for the Defence of the Wildlife and Resources of Extremadura, the Marcelo Spinola Centre of Higher Studies, the Biological Station of Doñaña, the Friends of the Vulture Fund, the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture, the Foundation for the Conservation of the Black Vulture, the Group for the Recuperation of Autochthonous Fauna, Iberis and the Institute of Research on Hunting Resources.

Foot-and-mouth disease, which for years served as the argument for the EU to block imports of beef from South American countries, is now spreading in Europe.

Scientists like Manuel Rodríguez, the dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, are careful to underline that the disease does not affect human beings.

But consuming the meat of cattle infected with BSE can cause the fatal Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD), which used to affect only people over 55 and was very rare in the world until 1996. Since then, 81 people have died of CJD in Britain, where the connection between BSE and CJD was first detected.

The early symptoms of CJD are tremors, loss of memory and balance, hallucinations and weakness. Victims rapidly fall into a state in which they can neither walk nor talk.

BSE – attributed to feeding cattle meat and bone meal from infected animals – like scrapie, its equivalent in sheep, is not caused by a virus or bacteria, but by the abnormal mutation of prion proteins, which are present in the cells of all vertebrates.

The mutated prion proteins infect healthy ones, gradually affecting the entire brain of the infected individual, which takes on the consistency of a sponge. The disease is always fatal.

The affected prion proteins apparently provoke no immune response in the victims. They are very stable and can withstand extreme heat and cold, radiation and antiseptics that would kill other infectious agents.