Yates warns against BSE scaremongering

THE Minister for Agriculture, Mrs Yates, yesterday warned the media about the dangers of scaremongering on BSE with wild talk of a new crisis for sheep.

"It's easy to start a forest fire, but extremely difficult to put it out," Mr Yates said as journalists probed for a scandal that was simply not there.

Mr Yates, wearing his hat of president of the Agriculture Council, was engaged in all night talks to broker a deal on the farm price package and reform of the fruit and vegetable market.

Speaking earlier to the press, he cautioned against scare stories over the call on Monday night by the Farm Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, for new measures to ensure the brains, spinal cord, nervous tissue and spleen of sheep do not enter the food chain.

Mr Fischler was responding to new evidence that in a laboratory experiment sheep fed on feed heavily contaminated with BSE could develop the disease. It had previously been believed that sheep could not catch BSE although they are susceptible to the similar disease, scrapie. There is no evidence that eating scrapie infected meat can affect humans.

Mr Fischler argued that if there was a theoretical possibility that BSE could be caught by sheep then extra measures should be taken to prevent vulnerable tissue entering the food chain.

But he said the practice of feeding meat and bone meal to ruminants was banned in 1994, and in Ireland in 1990. The transmission of BSE to sheep is thus just a laboratory phenomenon, a Commission spokesman insisted.

Mr Yates said that in the ministers' discussion on Monday night on the need to adjust the beef market in the wake of the BSE crisis, there was unanimous agreement on the analysis of Mr Fischler of the problem, but some differences of approach.

The ministers agreed to increase intervention limits this year from 400,000 tonnes to 700,000 tonnes, and next year from 350,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes. Ministers would also agree in September on measures to cut production, but they were prepared to call a crisis meeting in August should the market plunge as the French fear it might.

Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, adds The Irish Food Board yesterday said consumers of Irish lamb, at home and abroad, could have absolute confidence in the quality of the product.

Mr Michael Duffy, chief executive of the board, said Irish lamb was a natural product farmed in a clean, healthy environment which is grass based. Sheep are not fed meat or bone meal.

Mr Duffy said that Bord Bia would be active in reassuring customers of the integrity and quality of Irish lamb.