NEWS RELEASE 01 October 2003

After BSE -Its Costs - The Future

The long-term cost of BSE in cattle has been estimated, by a panel of experts, to be close to 100 billion Euro.

The international group, headed by Professor Patrick Cunningham of Trinity College Dublin has presented its report, which is critical of government supervision, farming methods and practices in the meat industry.

"BSE has been a calamity for governments, for the meat trade, for farmers and most of all for the 150 people who have died from the BSE linked variant Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease", said Professor Cunningham. "The cost in money terms alone is staggering and makes BSE the most expensive disease that has ever struck the European cattle herd. It is the equivalent of Irish beef exports for 90 years."

BSE spread to 21 countries world wide. Britain, where the disease was first found, was by far the most severely affected, with 183,496 cattle affected and with deaths of 136 people - victims of vCJD.

Most west European countries have been affected, together with Japan, and, most recently, Canada, where the confirmation of a single case in May 2003 is costing $11million a day in lost exports.

The report, prepared for the European Association for Animal Production (EAAP), highlights further points:

• The BSE epidemic is slowly drawing to a close, will probably be finished in ten years, and is unlikely to recur.
• There are three main unanswered questions: what was its real origin, what is the future of the human disease vCJD, and what is to be done with the 16 million tonnes of waste material that formerly went into meat and bone meal.
• The epidemic cost far more than is generally appreciated - the report estimates the long term costs in Europe at 92 billion Euro.
• The BSE experience has exposed bad practice in the food chain, a prime example being the use and unregulated trade in meat and bone meal which caused its international spread in the first instance.
• Major and overdue corrective actions have been taken - tightened controls, new laws, new food safety agencies, which has and continues to change food production in Europe.
  Much of this cost will be carried by European livestock farmers who face parallel challenges including long term price decline (around 3% a year), changing consumer requirements, a shift in economic power to large retailers, increased competition through globalisation and enlargement of the EU, environmental problems in some areas from excessive intensification, and finally the uneconomic scale of most farms.
• 95% of Europe's meat, milk and eggs are consumed in Europe. In this market, new norms of accountability, traceability and consumer assurance will be required, as well as new ways of protecting and rewarding quality and diversity in the food chain.

A brief description of the report and the full text (104 pages,800Kb) can be downloaded (for press use only) at http://www.wageningenacademic.com/BSE_report

Hard copy can be had from jacobs@WageningenAcademic.com

For further Information please contact:

Patrick Cunningham, Dept. of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland (+353 1-6081064)Mike Steele, BSAS Office (Tel: 0131 445 4508)