First German BSE case confirmed in laboratory

The dappled brown cow was slaughtered Wednesday in Holstein, northern Germany, and an on-the-spot test soon after found it had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). That test, which is not fully reliable, had to be backed up by scrutiny of tissue in a lab.

Heide Simonis, premier of Schleswig-Holstein state, said in Kiel she was told that the nationally recognized laboratory in the southern German town of Tuebingen had confirmed the four-year-old beast was infected.

It was revealed during the week that BSE was found in a second cow of German origin. That animal, exported to Portugal a little more than two years ago, was found at slaughter in the Azores to be infected.

The farmers who raised both animals insist they were never given feed containing animal meal, the most common way the disease is thought to spread.

Agriculture officials in Saxony-Anhalt state, where the second animal was raised, said they had proof that neither of its parents were infected either.

Previous to this week, Germany had had six cases of BSE in its national herd, but all in animals born in other countries and then imported.

In an interview set to appear Monday in the German newspaper Die Welt, the European Union farm commissioner, David Byrne, said he assumed there were more infected animals in Germany.

He accused Berlin of having until recently blocked anti-BSE measures in the E.U. farm ministers' council. He denied the E.U. Commission had delayed or put economic interests first in the fight against the disease.

BSE is generally accepted as the cause of variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans. Both diseases destroy the brain, and the prevailing view is that both are transmitted by particles called prions.

(dpa)