Protecting Your Interests

T-Bone Steak May Be Heading Back on Europe's Menus

“BRUSSELS (Reuters) - T-bone steaks, effectively banned across much of Europe over "mad cow" disease fears, may be heading back onto continental menus, following new scientific advice released on Wednesday.

After a sharp increase in mad cow disease during 2000, the sale of beef containing the backbone of animals aged over 12 months was banned a year ago in many European countries, with the age limit effectively outlawing T-bone steak.

Italy's beloved Tuscan Fiorentina cut, for example, traditionally comes from cattle aged between 17 and 22 months.  But European Union (news - web sites) scientists said on Wednesday the mad cow risk in animals born after January 2001--when a ban on all meat-based animal feed came into effect--was very low.

"The European Commission (news - web sites) considers that this advice opens the possibility to start discussions with the member states on raising the age limit for the removal of the vertebral column in cattle born after the feed ban," the EU executive said.

"This discussion will have to take account of evidence on the effective enforcement of the ban," it said in a statement.

EU officials said there was as yet no fixed idea of what the age limit should be and that cattle would have to have been born after January 2001 at the earliest. But if it was set at 18 months, for example, T-bones could be back on sale in butchers' shops before the end of the year.

The T-bone ban exempted countries such Sweden, Finland and Austria where there were no cases of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (news - web sites) (BSE (news - web sites))--the cattle brain-wasting illness believed to cause a similar deadly condition in humans.

The vertebral column was thought to be particularly dangerous because the BSE-causing prions have been found to be normally concentrated in nervous tissue rather than muscle.

More than 100 people, most of them in Britain, have so far died of the human version of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news - web sites)(vCJD).  BSE originated in the UK in the 1980s and swept through the nation's Cattle herd, prompting a block on all beef exports.

Britain and Portugal were also exempt from the ban because of extra public health measures already taken there after the crisis in the 1990s.

France had its own national ban on T-bones.  The scientific advice released on Wednesday also said the low BSE risk of animals born after the meat-based feed ban was dependent on the ban being effectively implemented and enforced.

But the ban on so-called MBM (meat-and-bone meal) has always been temporary and the commission has said that once new controls on animal by-products as well as other safeguards come into force, it may reconsider the measure.”

David Evans,·T-Bone Steak May Be Heading Back on Europe's Menus,·Reuters,·Wed May 22, 1:33 PM ET