001144 French Beef Exports Battered

Paris - A blend of panic and prohibition has proved a sour sauce for French beef, with consumers across Europe slashing the meat from their menus because of fears that eating it could cause the human form of mad cow disease.

Exports to France's main markets - Italy and Greece - have been crippled. Beef consumption is down by as much as 60% in those countries, and both nations have slapped national bans on some beef imports from France.

The French government says the public is gripped by a “psychosis,” but the results for the French beef industry are far from imaginary.

“French beef exports have almost ground to a halt because wholesalers, who have meat in stock, are not buying any more,” said Bernard Baudienville of the French Center for Foreign Trade, a government research body.

Experts believe people contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease - the human form of the fatal brain-wasting mad cow disease - by eating infected beef.

The beef scare exploded in Britain in 1996 when scientists confirmed that mad cow could jump the species barrier and infect humans. The European Union (news - web sites) responded by banning British beef exports. It lifted the ban in August 1999 in response to safety measures adopted by Britain.

Two people are known to have died in France from the human equivalent of the disease, which has no known treatment. In Britain, 81 people have died since the disease was identified by government scientists.

Public fears about the dangers of eating beef reached panic levels in France last month when it was discovered that potentially infected meat made it to supermarket shelves before being hastily withdrawn.

Now, France's whole beef industry - from the farmers who raise the cows to the people who work in the slaughterhouses - is facing a hard winter.

Beef sales have fallen by around 50% in France, and the panic has not stopped at French borders. After France banned T-bone steaks and some other cuts, deemed to pose a higher risk of transmitting the disease, European Union governments followed suit.

Italy has banned most French beef imports and steer and cows more than 18 months old because they are believed to be more likely to contract the disease. Greece has banned T-bone steaks.

“In Italy, consumption has dropped by 60% since the beginning of this week,” Baudienville said.

It's a similar situation in Greece, the second-largest market for French beef. Sales have slumped by around 50%.

“We are not far from zero in exports to Greece,” Baudienville said. He said it was not yet possible to quantify the financial cost of the slump in exports.

Swiss and Italian schools have followed the lead of numerous French schools, banning beef from France from cafeteria menus. Austria, Spain, Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Oman have imposed embargoes on French beef imports. Sales in Germany, France's third-largest market for beef, are off around 15% and officials there are said to be considering a ban.

Despite the huge sales drops, it could have been worse. During grueling, all-night talks between agriculture ministers of the 15-nation EU in Brussels this week, France escaped imposition of an EU-wide ban.

Instead, the ministers decided on a massive increase in testing of cows. They also agreed that scientists would assess the national bans on French beef and offer an opinion on whether they are valid. They are due to report in about two weeks.

Removing the formal barriers to French beef exports is only part of the problem. The psychological scars from the mad cow crisis could prove harder to erase.

“We are involved in something very irrational. We don't know how to fight it,” Baudienville said.

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