BSE crisis highlights problems in farming methods

Date: 27/06/1996

THE UK government's admission that there may be a direct link between the cattle brain disease, BSE, and the human illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, has brought into sharp focus the importance to human health of safe farming methods.

How, people are asking, did we ever arrive at a situation where cattle were being forced to eat the remains of diseased sheep?

With no one absolutely certain whether the UK faces an epidemic of 'mad-cow disease' in humans, one thing seems clear. Never again will policy-makers be allowed to take half-hearted measures to combat a problem with such potentially disastrous consequences.

Only now, a decade on from the discovery of BSE, have the UK authorities been forced into taking drastic measures to eradicate the disease which will require years to take full effect.

Until convincing proof of the extent of the link can be found, all that member states can do is to ensure that measures are being effectively implemented and continue to monitor cases of CJD - a policy which gained the full support of health ministers at their last meeting in May.

In the meantime, the crisis has intensified the debate over the type of farming Europe wants to see. It comes at a time when the Commission is looking to streamline its complex web of food laws, prompting fears that too much deregulation could lead to further health scares.

Preparatory work on a Green Paper on food legislation has caused divisions between different Commission departments as to whether rules should embrace all areas of food policy “from stable to table”, or whether regulations for farmers and processors should be administered separately.

For one food industry official, the answer is quite clear: “Mistakes in the food-processing sector are rare. Where much more care is needed is the farming sector.”

The Green Paper is likely to embrace both approaches, but will also put forward the US concept of “hazard analysis critical control points”. This is an integrated approach to food-borne diseases involving checks on potentially hazardous inputs in farm chemicals, the monitoring of farming conditions and controlling critical points in the harvesting and marketing of farm produce.

Already used in directives covering fishery products, the Commission is looking to introduce the approach at farm level too, believing it to be less bureaucratic than a legislative approach.

The Green Paper will also look at extending product liability to producers of primary agricultural products. But a system of quality assurance labelling is likely to be rejected as being too open to abuse - Commission officials believe good laws are preferable to bad labels.

Although by far the most serious, BSE is by no means the only disease-related problem the EU's intensive farming sector has faced in recent years. The early 1990s were blighted by regular outbreaks of both African and Classical Swine Fever.

Poultry-based diseases such as salmonella and campilobacter also make regular appearances.

This has reinforced feelings that intensive farming methods are perhaps inappropriate in a situation of surplus production. The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy introduced payments for 'extensive' production as well as for limited 'agri-environmental' schemes.

But momentum is now gathering behind the idea of linking farm payments to strict environmental criteria, which would, by definition, reduce the input of harmful chemicals into farm products.

Efforts to legislate to keep harmful pesticide and fertiliser residues out of food are proving difficult to administer, with member states proving slow in notifying their 'nitrate vulnerable zones' to the Commission.

In a development this month, the European Court annulled a 1994 directive on plant health products because it failed to respect existing measures to protect the quality of drinking water.

Attempts to legislate on maximum nitrate levels in individual vegetables such as spinach and lettuce have run into resistance from northern countries who claim that their climatic conditions mean that natural nitrate levels are far higher than in the sunnier south.

Belgian tomato growers even claim their attempts to return to 'natural' propagation methods by using insects rather than chemicals to kill pests may have lost them vital markets. They say buyers in the US and Japan are rejecting their produce, insisting they revert to pesticides.

The BSE crisis has temporarily diverted attention away from the controversy over the EU's decision to maintain its ban on the use of hormones in meat production, despite scientific evidence that they present no human health risk if properly administered. Its stand has sparked the wrath of the US administration.

Biotechnology companies are still lobbying for the Union to overturn its moratorium on the use of milk-yield booster Bovine Somatotropin (BST), introduced under the guise of a health measure, but heavily influenced by the fear that it could force small milk producers out of business.

A fresh battle is now looming over the use of antibiotics in animal feed and as a livestock growth promoter. Campaigners claim the danger of antibiotic resistance in humans is a potential health time bomb.