Study Triggers New BSE Scandal in France

France is sitting on a potential health time bomb concerning cases of the human form of BSE or "Mad Cow" Disease, according to researchers at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris. Projected figures from the study suggest that the number of infected cows which made it into the French food chain as BSE contaminated meat products could well be into the tens of thousands and may have already contributed to human deaths.

"We assume that between 1980 and 2000, a total of 301,200 cattle were infected in France with BSE," states the study by Virginie Supervie and Dominique Costagliola, the researchers responsible for exposing a new BSE scandal in France. According to the study published in the Institute's specialist journal, a total of 47,300 infected cattle had made it onto French consumers' tables by 1996.

The most explosive aspect of the study implies massive negligence on the part of the health and safety standards authorities in France for allowing contaminated meat to become available to the French public, not once but twice. Supervie and Costagliola believe that only the second wave of infection has been identified while the first one went unreported.

First French symptoms ten years after outbreak

After the first cases of the deadly disease were spotted in 1980's Britain, the French government was careful to ban imports of infected cows from the neighboring country. However, the control of its own supplies only began years later, after the first BSE symptoms were diagnosed in French bovines in 1991.

Up until 1989, nearly five years after the first BSE case in Great Britain, French farmers were still feeding their livestock British offal; remnants of the brain and spinal cord of dead animals which were used in animal feed and in which BSE remains infectious.

Farmers still used infected feed

So, for over a decade before the first French BSE symptoms were noticed, farmers were creating their own outbreak on French soil by using infected animal feed. It has also been suggested that French herds had been infected a long time before the 1980's but had gone unidentified due to the lack of knowledge on the disease.

The current publication comes at a very unfavorable time for the government in Paris. The French authorities recently announced the death of a 55-year-old man who suffered from the human variant of BSE, Creutzfeldt Jakob's Disease (CJD). His death is the seventh CJD fatality registered by French doctors.

Study suggests cover-up

In the report, Cosagliola harshly criticizes the French authorities. "One has known for some time that the official statistics do not reflect the true magnitude of the epidemic," writes the scientist. The facts support his claim. According to official statistics, there were merely 923 cattle infected with BSE in France during the last 13 years. That leaves an estimated 290,000 BSE animals unaccounted for in the official records.

Other evidence shows that the French authorities could have reacted to the potential epidemic at least four years ago. In a report of the Scientific Committee of the EU (SSC) which appeared in July 2000, experts warned about the danger of underestimating the numbers of BSE cases in France. According to Germany Der Spiegel magazine which printed extracts of the report at the time, page five of the paper shows that there is "no clear picture about the number of BSE cases (in France)."