BSE - Portugal

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Headline: WSJ: As U.K. 'Mad Cow' Export Ban Ends, Portugal's Beg

Wire Service: DJ (Dow )

Date: Tue, Dec 1, 1998

By Steve Stecklow

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

LISBON -- " Mad cow " disease isn't just a British problem. Consider

Portugal.

The European Union, which last week voted to lift its ban on British beef

exports, only five days before imposed a ninemonth export ban on beef and

cattle from Portugal. Cases of diseased cattle here are on the rise,

thousands of suspect animals have been slaughtered, and consumers are

shunning beef at butcher shops.

" Every day, we're speaking of this, " says Agostinho Fonseca

Nunes, a Lisbon butcher whose beef sales have dropped by half since 1996.

" People don't eat it. "

Portugal's troubles still don't rival Britain's. To date, 168 Portuguese

cattle are reported to have developed the deadly, rare brain disease,

compared with more than 175,000 cases in Britain. Unlike in Britain, where

30 people have died of what many scientists believe is the human version of

the disease, no cases have been reported in Portugal.

But Portugal, one of 14 countries outside of the United Kingdom that has

reported the disease in cattle, is the only one where cases are steadily

going up. Although the EU ban is mostly symbolic, since Portugal doesn't

export much beef, the repercussions at home, both economic and

psychological, are profound.

In the northern town of Famalicao, butcher Aires Silva stuffs sausages

into plastic. The traditional lining, local cow intestines, is now banned.

So, too, are young cow brains, another once-popular delicacy. " There's no

demand for it, anyway, " he says.

In nearby Povoa de Varzim, Gomes Moreira, a third-generation

dairy farmer, complains he has taken a financial beating since May, when

one of his cows appeared frightened and suddenly collapsed. A local

veterinarian diagnosed the condition as bovine spongiform encephalopathy,

or BSE, the technical name of mad-cow disease. Mr. Gomes Moreira was

instructed to kill and bury the cow on his farm, and the government ordered

the destruction of the rest of the herd-140 cows in all.

Portuguese government officials say the country's BSE problem originated

from imports of British cattle and animal feed in the 1980s. Between 1985

and 1989, when BSE was on the rise in Britain, Portugal imported 8,648 cows

and more than 140 tons of animal feed, which often contained ground-up

parts of diseased cattle. The first case in Portugal appeared in 1990,

although the government at first denied there was a problem. By 1994,

diseased cattle born in Portugal began to appear, apparently the result of

the contaminated feed. The numbers have been rising since, with 77 cases

this year to date.

The government maintains Portuguese beef has been safe all along, even

though most of the cows imported from Britain were never accounted for, and

certain animal parts more likely to carry infection weren't banned until

last year. Asked how many infected cattle have entered the food chain,

Ramiro Doutel Mascarenhas, vice director of the veterinary section of the

Ministry of Agriculture in Lisbon, forms a circle with his fingers. " Zero, "

he says.

The proof, he says, is that farmers who report diseased animals are paid

more than they are worth, so there is no financial incentive to send a sick

animal to the slaughterhouse. The government also purchases the rest of the

herd and destroys it, to make sure no other animals carry the disease. To

date, more than 6,000 cattle have been destroyed.