FRANCE: Mad cow disease has been found in a goat, the first time the brain-wasting affliction which ravaged European cattle herds and killed at least 100 people has been diagnosed in another animal, the EU confirmed yesterday.
"A suspected case of BSE in a goat slaughtered in France in 2002 has been confirmed today by a panel of European scientists," the EU Commission said in a statement.
Scientists initially thought that the animal, born in 2000, had scrapie, a disease from the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the formal name for mad cow disease.
The commission emphasised that there was little risk of humans catching the disease due to the strict food hygiene and animal feed rules which are in place. "Precautionary measures to protect consumers from this eventuality have been applied in the EU for several years . . . Any possible risk to consumers is minimal," it said.
The EU's food safety authority, EFSA, said that it was too early to analyse the risk from goat meat. "Important information gaps do not allow at this stage the quantification of BSE-related risk with regard to the consumption of goat meat," it said in a statement.
There are approximately 11.6 million goats in the 25 member-states of the EU. The largest herds are in France, Spain and Greece. Up to now, the risk of mad cow disease jumping from one species to another has focused on sheep, not goats.
No case of BSE has ever been confirmed as naturally occurring in sheep, but there are fears that some sheep diagnosed as having scrapie - not known to be harmful to humans - might be carrying the brain-wasting affliction.
The commission said that it would be increasing BSE-testing of goats for at least six months and would focus on EU states which have had BSE cases in cattle.
The EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, Mr Markos Kyprianou, said: "I want to reassure consumers that existing safety measures in the EU offer a very high level of protection. The testing programme has shown us that there is a very low incidence rate of TSEs in goats and it has allowed us to detect suspect animals so that they can be taken out of the food chain, as was done with this goat and its entire herd."
TSE stands for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a family of diseases which includes BSE and scrapie.
The French agriculture ministry said that the goat came from the Ardeche region in south-east France and was part of a flock of 300 goats which were all slaughtered. All the other animals which were killed had tested negative.
ANICAP, the French goat producers' group, said that they were not concerned at the discovery, because BSE did not affect milk products and people consumed very little goat meat.
"Many protective measures were taken long ago to face any possible [ BSE] case," the group's director, Ms Marilyne Le Page, told Reuters. "We are not worried." - Reuters