Press Release - Anti TSE controls should be in line with decline in BSE problem

Anti-TSE controls should be in line with decline in BSE problem.

The National Beef Association is calling on EU decision makers to conduct an urgent examination of astronomically expensive anti-BSE controls and introduce TSE regulation that is more proportionate to the risk raised by this year’s, cross-Europe, incidence of around 40 cases within a herd containing millions of cattle.   
Last week EU Farm Ministers agreed that a step wise reduction of the anti-BSE barriers, which was based on an appropriate assessment of risk, could be undertaken – and that advice provided by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) should underpin the process.

And the NBA is hoping that this signals that a long awaited, root and branch, review of anti-BSE rules, installed when almost a thousand cases a week was being reported in the UK alone, is at last underway.
“The key point is that regulation should be proportionate to the risk and the situation surrounding BSE has changed dramatically since the 1990’s when the route through which it spread into humans and animals had still to be confirmed and not everyone was sure effective preventative action had been taken,” said the Association’s director, Kim Haywood.

“Circumstances are surely different now that the disease has been pushed into a corner. After 2012, there could be less than ten cases a year across the whole of Europe and five years after that there could be less than one. Regulation needs to be in tune with this, but at the moment it is still installed at emergency levels.”  
The industry would never do anything to undermine public safety, but clearly the long term preventive measures that have been adopted, have proved successful and it is time to recognise this.  

 
The NBA is looking for current rules to be eased because the disproportionate expense is unfair to taxpayers and will inflict more permanent damage on beef production, and beef processing structures, if it continues.
“The towering, anti-BSE, cost mountain the beef industry still faces is hobbling both the production and processing sectors. A double belt and braces protection system remains in place and the Association believes proper account must be taken of the reduction in risk associated with BSE that automatically follows on from the dramatic fall in the number of cases,” said Ms Haywood.

“Continuing high anti-BSE inspection costs lie behind the Food Standards Agency’s recent misguided attempt to inflict full cost recovery for its in-abattoir presence and are also among the reasons Defra is keen to install a disease cost sharing system between itself and the livestock industry.”
“So cost pressure on the FSA, and Defra, would also be reduced if EFSA and others agreed there was, for example, no longer justification for the removal of specific carcase parts from all cattle aged over only 30 months or the BSE testing of all cattle older than just 48 months.”

“Current estimates are that it is costing much more than twelve million pounds to identify a single case of BSE through brain testing. This expense could be dramatically lowered if the age limit was raised again or a sensible birth date was installed and no brain stem test was required for any animal born after it.”

For more information contact:

Kim Haywood, NBA director.  Tel. 0131 336 1754/07967 698936