Yes, we had mad cow disease too, France confesses

FRENCH scientists issued a damning report today finally admitting the true scale of their country's mad cow disease epidemic.

The confession that BSE was rife in France in the early Nineties comes a decade after it banned British beef.

The study, ordered by a Paris judge, found not enough had been done to prevent the spread of BSE in France when it was first discovered there in 1986.

Scientists said the lives of nine French people who died between 1996 and 2006 from the human form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, could have been saved if better precautions had been taken.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which causes cows' brains to become "spongy" and full of holes, was first identified in Britain in 1986. In 1988 scientists declared it was a disease that could be passed to humans, and measures were taken to stop it spreading.

But in France, farmers were only obliged to declare the illness from 1990.

The EU lifted a trade ban on British beef in 1999 - but France ignored the ruling and continued its own illegal ban for seven years, while claiming their herds were disease-free. It has never paid tens of millions of pounds in EU fines for persisting with the embargo. President Jacques Chirac said in 2003 that the only thing Britain had given European farming was mad cow disease.

Now the report has exposed the true situation in France at the time of the epidemic. Scientist Jean-Louis Thillier said: "There was enough scientific information for the government to have taken measures to protect the public from BSE in 1991. In fact it was not until 10 years later that adequate steps were taken.

"Why was there an embargo on British beef, but nothing being done here? Perhaps because the French government forgot its role in guaranteeing the safety of food products, and this neglect cost the lives of nine people."