001207 Swedish Rules May Boost Beef Sales

Stockholm, Sweden - Slabs of beef filling the bins at Stockholm's indoor Hoetorget marketplace have plenty of takers: most of the meat comes from Swedish cows, and many believe rules put in place years ago have helped insulate the country from mad cow disease.

“These days I say you shouldn't be afraid, but if you are afraid: Eat Swedish,” said the National Food Administration's chief veterinarian, Haakan Svenson.

In 1986, a debate in Sweden over the treatment of animals led to a ban on the use of animals that have died from disease in fodder. Farmers' organizations followed in 1987 with a voluntary ban on fodder with any meat and bonemeal. That ban became law in 1991.

“It was an ethical decision that it's wrong to use dead animals in the food chain for animals,” Agriculture Ministry spokesman Fredrik Vinthagen said. “There should be no cannibalism.”

The brain-wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy was identified in 1986, but became most visible in the mid-1990s when Britain found itself with tens of thousands of cases a year and linked the cattle disease to a deadly human ailment.

Sweden's strict guidelines are expensive for farmers, and consumers sometimes pay twice as much for local beef than imported. But most now seem willing bear the cost.

“We have got a lot of controls in Sweden and I don't think there's any risk at all,” said Siv Kimbre as she waited to buy meat at the busy market in Stockholm.

When the European market opened up, Swedish beef production declined. The most recent figures show imported beef made up 10% of the beef consumed in Sweden before 1995, when Sweden joined the EU, and 30% before the recent scare.

There are no hard figures to show that Swedes are now shifting to Swedish beef, but government officials and three major grocery chains all say there has been no decline in beef sales.

Erkan Bakirdan said business at the butcher shop he founded 12 years ago is as brisk as ever, and that more than half his customers now insist on Swedish beef. At least two municipalities have said they would only use Swedish beef in hospital and school meals.

“Swedish beef is more natural and you don't have to worry about it,” Bakirdan said. “The customer will pay a lot more for it.”

A link was established in 1996 between mad cow disease and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which has killed 81 people in Britain and two in France.

A public health uproar was quelled after the 15-member European Union banned exports of British beef and feed. Millions of British cows also were killed. But fears returned with the discovery of mad cow cases in Germany and Spain and the second death from CJD in France.

The recent scare has made headlines in Sweden, but they're less panicked than those in other European countries. “Mad cows - a test for the EU” editorialized the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

In a move to restore public confidence, the EU is expected to order all cows over 21/2-years-old to be certified free of mad cow disease before being sold as food in any member country.

Many Swedish farmers say that's good for countries at risk, but they don't need more costly testing because they took steps to prevent an outbreak in the first place.

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