First cases of BSE reported in Germany, new cases in France

The infected animal was born in the northern state of Schleswig Holstein in 1996, government officials confirmed. Germany had heretofore had no reported cases of BSE-infected cows born in Germany. In the six recorded cases, the cows in question were born in Switzerland and Britain and imported to Germany.

Officials in the state agriculture ministry in Baden-Wuerttemberg said the BSE case had turned up in a new rapid BSE test, and noted that these tests have a five to 10 per cent margin of error. A definitive result would only be available next week after a traditional BSE test is carried out, ministry spokesman Michael Reiss said in Stuttgart.

The animal that tested positive in the rapid BSE test was slaughtered on Wednesday. The meat was seized and the slaughterhouse closed down, officials said. The regional government in Kiel has ordered the meat from all 153 animals slaughtered at that slaughterhouse that day to be seized.

The agriculture minister in Schleswig-Holstein, Ingrid Franzen, said that all animals that had eaten the same feed as the apparently infected animal would be killed.

In another case, a cow born in the eastern German state of Saxony- Anhalt has tested positive for BSE in Portugal's Azores islands, the agriculture ministry said in Magdeburg Friday. The cow was born in 1995 and exported in 1998. The farm where the cow was bred has since been closed down.

The animal was slaughtered on October 2 and the body destroyed, the Portuguese agriculture ministry said. The German government and the European Union had been informed. The two new BSE cases in France bring the number of diseased cows found this year to 112.

In France, sources at the prefecture of the town of Lons-le- Saunier said Friday that the first case ever of BSE had been detected in the south-eastern department of Jura. Late on Thursday, another BSE-infected animal was found in the western department of Loire-Atlantic.

Since BSE first appeared in France, 192 cases of the disease have been officially reported. The increase in the number of cases, due primarily to more thorough testing by French authorities, has provoked a crisis in the French beef industry, with domestic sales dropping by over 50 per cent. In addition, a number of European countries have placed restrictions on the import of French beef or have banned it entirely. Meanwhile, a 22-year-old man in Bavaria has been diagnosed with a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the Green Party faction leader in the Bavarian party, Ruth Paulig said at a press conference in Munich Friday. Paulig, citing scientists, said the new variant of CJD was apparently caused by a genetic mutation. She said a link with BSE could not be ruled out until the case had been investigated. But Paulig also stressed that so far, no provable link existed between the 22-year-old's illness and BSE. Paulig reiterated calls for a general ban on meat and bone meal in animal feed. The 22-year-old man's parents charged that doctors were not doing enough to determine what their son was suffering from. They said he has been ill for 14 months. dpa cro sc

(dpa)