Tracking Spread of 'Mad Cow' In Europe Remains Random

January 8, 2001 by Geoff Winestock
Wall Street Journal

Abstract: Two summers ago, a German doctor named Ingo Malm decided to set up a private laboratory to test cattle for mad-cow disease. By last March, Bovinia GmbH was offering its services to slaughterhouses and retailers across southern Germany... The 45-year-old general practitioner soon received a written warning from the Health Ministry of Bavaria, Germany's biggest cattle region. It said that the test kit his eight-employee outfit was using hadn't been certified by Germany's federal government and that, in any case, only the government had the right to test for BSE. The kit was licensed from Switzerland's Prionics AG, which had developed one of the first reasonably effective tests for BSE. Dr. Malm kept using the kit, which had been approved by the European Union's top scientific panel, and drew a blunter warning in June... A spokesman for the Bavarian Health Ministry, Bernhard
Seidenath, says the state government blocked the use of Prionics' tests because it feared they might be unreliable; Prionics says its test is the most reliable available. Mr. Seidenath called the threat to effectively shut down Bovinia "history from a long time ago."

Bovinia's fate helps explain why it is only now, nearly five years after Britain acknowledged a link between BSE and a similar brain-wasting disease in humans, that much of continental Europe is accepting that it, too, faces a "mad-cow" problem. A form of BSE, having jumped the species barrier, has killed more than 80 people, almost all in Britain. The first cases of BSE in Denmark, Germany and Spain were recorded only recently -- last spring in Denmark, November in Germany and Spain. The incidence in France quintupled last year. Before that, the cattle disease almost certainly existed, but most European Union countries weren't seriously looking for it and, in some cases, thwarted those who were.

Germany began massive BSE testing only in December, after the first recorded case of German BSE rattled consumers and shook the government. All across the Continent, as interviews with independent scientists, members of EU inspection teams, local veterinarians and government regulators suggest, measures for tracking mad-cow disease have been haphazard, poorly executed and, in many countries, nearly absent altogether...

"We cannot say if this is a new peak in the incidence of BSE or if the upsurge in cases this [past] year is only because surveillance wasn't sufficient before," says Gerard Pascal, chairman of the European Commission's standing scientific committee on BSE and a leading authority on the subject.

A stepped-up testing program for mad-cow disease that the EU launched last week to calm consumers has stirred more fear and confusion, especially in Germany and Spain, where BSE cases are up sharply. After the first week of compulsory testing, Spain cited three new BSE cases Friday, taking its total to five. The same day, Germany announced plans to broaden its testing to cover younger animals after a private company found a case of BSE in a 28-month-old cow. ..

The discovery of BSE in Germany was especially embarrassing because it had nothing to do with the government. The first case was uncovered because Ulrich Spengler, the director of a small private testing laboratory in Hamburg, Artus AG, made a useful business contact through his Spanish teacher. In 1998, Dr. Spengler, 33, quit a doctoral program at the Institute for Tropical Diseases in Hamburg to set up a three-person lab for Germany's organic-food market, offering testing for diseases such as salmonella, which the German government doesn't check systematically. He decided early this year to add BSE tests to his list of services and, like Dr. Malm, flew to Zurich to stitch up a contract with Prionics.

The Hamburg Health Inspection Ministry didn't threaten to shut him down, though he says local politicians went around telling potential customers that testing was a waste of time. Then, last autumn, his Spanish teacher told him about a small slaughterhouse in Galenburg, in Lower Saxony, that was trying to establish a niche market for organic beef. Dr. Spengler traveled to Galenburg to try to sell his salmonella testing service. As an afterthought, he threw in BSE testing. "It was my first customer, so I made them a special cheap offer for the two types of tests," Dr. Spengler says. Within a month, tests at Galenburg uncovered Germany's first confirmed case of BSE.