Europe begins picking up the pieces

06/01/2001

Mark A. DeSorbo

LONDON—Thirteen people recently tested negative for foot-and-mouth disease, restrictions have been lifted on more than 16,000 farms, and mass slaughtering has been eased.

And while news has allowed Europe to breathe a brief sigh of relief, the crisis, which has clearly demonstrated to the world the importance of contamination control procedures outside the cleanroom, is far from over.

With mad cow disease still looming on the horizon, livestock, meat and tourism industries have taken significant blows, says Beate Gminder, a spokesperson for the European Union's Health and Consumer Protection division.

"Both diseases have harmed industry in Europe. Our export markets have nearly disappeared. Right now, we do not have intra-community trading," Gminder recently told CleanRooms.

In fact, France, like many European countries, has appealed to the EU to help its cattle industry. "The situation of the cattle industry remains extremely difficult," says Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. "Consumption is down 20 percent, slaughterhouse activity is down 15 percent, the market for 'live meat' is blocked by a ban on imports by a number of our trading partners."

Reports from the English Tourism Council indicate that the foot-and-mouth epidemic alone could cost the industry as many as 250,000 jobs in the United Kingdom alone. It said that if tourism did not get special government aid, it was likely to lose $7.17 billion this year and billions more over the next two years.

Even the band U2 has offered its services to help the ailing tourism industry in their homeland of Ireland.

In a recent statement to the media, British Prime Minister Tony Blair commended veternarians, civil servants, scientists and the armed forces for their vigilence in combating foot-and-mouth, but indicated that the effort has "far exceeded the logistical demands of the Gulf War."

"As the epidemic recedes, attention is rightly turning to the question of a recovery plan for the livestock industry," says Blair. "The government does see a case for helping those farmers most affected by the crisis to take rational and sustainable decisions on their future."

Blair indicated that the focus must also be to ensure that restocking helps achieve wider objectives on the environment, food safety, animal welfare and animal traceability. For the tourism industry, Blair says the government has lauched measures to help the industry and rural businesses, including rate relief, small firm loans and deferred tax payments.

The perception of fear
Despite some small victories, initial fear that was brought on by mad cow and intensified by foot-and-mouth is still rampant.

Dr. Ken Goldstein, principal of Cleanroom Consultants Inc. (Scottsdale, AZ), recently returned from a trip to Dublin, where he spoke at a Irish Cleanroom Society function, an event, he says, that was almost cancelled due to foot-and-mouth.

"People are not traveling as much, and they believe that between 30 to 50 percent of their attendees did not show up because of [foot and mouth]," says Goldstein.

Everywhere he looked, Goldstein says he saw signs proclaiming the urgency of containing foot-and-mouth disease.

Entranceways to buildings and meeting halls, he says, had industrial carpeting or mats soaked in disinfectant. Even parking lots had thick foam mats soaked with disinfectant to clean the tires as motorists entered and exited.

"They were not universal and not too terribly wet, but I found them in about 25 percent of the buildings that I walked by or that I was in," says Goldstein. "There were even some in the meeting halls, restrooms and hotels."

On television, Goldstein estimated that 30 to 50 percent of the news had to do with foot-and-mouth."

"It's quite a tragedy," he says, adding that it did not stop him from eating lamb and beef.

Loosening restrictions
Foot-and-mouth and mad cow, known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), have been popping up elsewhere. Countries throughout Asia and South America are taking precautionary steps and slaughtering animals in an effort to contain the foot-and-mouth.

Mad cow still mysteriously rears its ugly head. A teen-age boy in France recently died of Crueztfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human variant of BSE, and a middle-aged woman in Oklahoma has contracted and is battling the brain-debilitating disease, according to the Associated Press. Many countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, are still banning the importation of European meat and related products.

Gminder says the EU continues to test any cow older than 30 months of age for BSE. So far, about two percent, or 37 out of 700,000, tested positive for mad cow.

At the time of this report, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was likely to scale back the blanket ban on livestock and fresh meat imports from the EU imposed due to foot-and-mouth disease.

She also said the USDA was increasing measures, including doubling the size of dog patrols at points of entry, and funneling additional funds to ensure the highly contagious livestock disease is kept at bay.

Since 1989, the USDA has banned importation of live cows, sheep and goats from Britain, a prohibition that was expanded in 1997 to include all of Europe. Last December, the USDA banned all imports of rendered animal products from Europe, regardless of species. The USDA also inspects all cattle before they go to slaughter and impounds those that show possible symptoms of BSE.