BRUSSELS, Belgium — European Union farm ministers sought a united stand Monday against mad cow disease, including a ban on animal products in fodder and the removal of untested, older animals from the food chain.
At an emergency meeting in Brussels, the 15 ministers pressed for drastic new measures to restore consumer confidence in the beef industry, increasingly hurt by unilateral action against member nations where the disease is making inroads.
A six-month ban on animal products in fodder, the main suspect in the transmission of the brain-wasting disease, was the key measure under discussion.
If approved, it would "allow Europe to take a major step forward" in containing the disease, said French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany, who chaired the crisis meeting.
His British counterpart, Nick Brown, said the measure would "be able to prevent the spread of the disease."
The mad cow crisis reappeared two months ago after an increase in French cases and reports that tainted beef might have made it to supermarket shelves. Last week, the first cases in Germany and Spain were recorded, and over the weekend Spanish authorities said the spread may be more widespread than initially thought.
The cattle disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is thought to spread to humans in the form of the brain-wasting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Two people in France and 80 in Britain have died from the disease; 89 people across the EU have been infected.
A call to temporarily ban all livestock feed containing meat and bone meal failed to find the necessary majority at the last EU farm meeting. Nordic countries and Austria had reservations because the disease had not spread to their herds and because of the cost.
Such feed represents some $1.3 billion a year and destroying it would cost about double that. Finding replacement feed would add another $600 million to the bill, EU officials said.
The ministers will assess proposals to keep untested animals older than 30 months out of the food chain, measures which would further sap already stretched farm budgets and raise huge practical problems.
Glavany said France wanted for its farmers "compensations matching the traumas the sector is going through."
Germany had other thoughts.
"We want to examine where help is needed," Finance Minister Hans Eichel said over the weekend. "But you also have to see that agriculture is the sector of the economy with the highest subsidies."