bse
France did not immediately comply with the ECJ’s decision in the BSE case we are reading now. The Commission proposed going back to the ECJ to ask it to fine France for non-compliance with the decision but later decided to withdraw its application for a fine to be imposed after France withdrew the ban in 2002. But, while France was busy keeping British beef out, its own cattle were infected with BSE and some reports suggest the French government seriously underestimated how serious the problem was.
More recently a lot of attention has been paid to TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) generally: deer and goats and sheep suffere from diseases similar to BSE or even from BSE itself. The UK Government’s specialist committee which focuses spongiform encephalopathy suggests that there is a lot of uncertainty about the public health aspects of BSE.