011224 Austria Confirms First Case of Mad Cow

Vienna - Austria confirmed its first case of mad cow disease, leaving Sweden as the only country in the European Union without a reported case of the brain-wasting scourge.

Mandatory testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy carried out after the cow was slaughtered last Thursday proved positive and tissue samples were dispatched for independent verification to a laboratory in England.

“The four tests undertaken in Austria were fully confirmed by the laboratory in Weybridge. Austria has its first case of BSE,” Gerald Grosz, spokesman for Health Minister Herbert Haupt, said.

The 70-month-old contaminated cow, born and reared in Austria, came from a farm near Gmuend in the eastern province of Lower Austria.

Both the farm and slaughterhouse have been shut to allow for further testing on the other animals and their feed.

Finland also reported its first case of BSE last week.

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Austria, one of Europe's leading organic farming regions, has long prided itself on its strict environmental laws and high veterinary standards.

It has banned the feeding of meat and bone meal products, suspected of carrying the disease, to cattle and sheep since 1990.

The government has hastened to assure the nation--where the boiled beef dish of Tafelspitz is a favorite--that rigorous testing on all slaughtered cattle guaranteed no contaminated beef would make it onto consumers' plates.

If Austria's experience with previous food scares is anything to go by--pork consumption barely changed after a scandal this year over illegal antibiotics in pigs--this nation of carnivores may remain unruffled.

“I bet we've had BSE all along--nobody can tell me that it's just appeared now,” said Grete Urban, a housewife from the rural province of Styria. “People just didn't know what it was before.”

“I'm going to carry on eating Austrian beef without a moment's thought,” she added.

The human form of mad cow disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), is thought to have killed about 100 people in Europe.

Scientists suspect the mode of transmission is through eating contaminated beef. The incubation period is believed to be up to a decade or more.

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