001232 Europe Tries To Assure Beef Is Safe

Rome - Restaurants, butchers and cattlemen across Europe are scrambling to lure back beef-lovers scared away by fears of mad cow disease. In Rome, McDonald's boasts of serving only Italian beef. French butchers are tossing barbecues. British ads tout the ease of cooking beef.

The continentwide mad cow scare began last month in France and has spread like wildfire. In Italy, alone beef sales have fallen 70%, the agricultural federation says.

Hoping to reverse the trend, Italian butchers are promoting all-Italian beef.

Meat sold in the GS supermarket chain has a sticker with an Italian flag on it. The Coop chain has run full-page newspaper ads with a benign-looking cow munching grass and a tagline that says: “To our animals, vegetable aren't just a side dish.”

The ad emphasizes that all their beef comes from less than 20-month-old cows who have never been fed by animal feed - widely considered responsible from spreading the malady.

At the McDonald's restaurant near the Pantheon in central Rome, a sign assures customers that “we only use boneless cuts, in particular the front ones in Italian beef. The meat is first choice, and comes exclusively from the muscle.”

Spanish butchers, too, are posting signs about the nationality of their beef.

In Paris, French butchers threw a gargantuan barbecue Sunday at the Luxembourg Gardens, roasting three whole cows on a spit and passing out slices on silver platters to the crowd.

“The objective today is to re-emphasize the value of beef, and show that it isn't some kind of poison that shouldn't be eaten any longer,” said Maurice Lormeau, president of the butchers union in Paris.

Some see signs that the pro-beef campaign might be starting to pay off.

“The situation is going back to normal now,” said Luigi Maestri, director of the Rome McDonald's, which was crowded Monday with burger-munching beef eaters.

In Britain, where a first wave of mad cow panic broke out in 1996, the Meat and Livestock Commission said recently that beef sales are rising from the all- time low they hit at the height of Britain's crisis. Ads in Britain now focus on the ease of serving beef.

“We are trying to illustrate that beef ... is very easy and quick to cook,” said Phil Toms, product manager for beef and lamb at the commission. “We want to encourage people to eat beef more often during the week.”

Most menus in quality British restaurants will specifically state that the beef comes from Scotland or some other source outside of England, usually Argentina.

The European Union has taken action to prevent the mad cow disease from spreading. Last week it imposed a six-month ban on ground meat and bone in animal feed. It has also stepped up tests on older cattle, which are more vulnerable to mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as the disease is formally known.

Some scientists suspect the disease causes a similar fatal brain-destroying ailment, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in people who eat infected beef. Two people in France and 80 in Britain have died from the human form of the disease.

In Germany, gripped by mad cow panic since the discovery of the first case in November, McDonald's is using a different approach from the one used in Italy, where the only two cases of mad cow were in 1994 in animals imported from Britain.

A radio ad by the U.S. fast-food giant aired in Germany is promoting non- beef options: salads, chicken and fish burgers.

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