DATE=11/23/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-269616

TITLE=FRANCE / SPAIN / MAD COW (L ONLY)

BYLINE=PAUL MILLER

DATELINE=PARIS

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Spain has confirmed its first case of mad cow disease, and says there may be a second one. But, the country's agriculture minister said there is no threat of an epidemic. In France, another six cases of the disease have been confirmed. Paul Miller in Paris reports French officials are having little success in convincing their citizens, or the rest of Europe, that French beef is safe to eat.

TEXT: While French politicians have been eating beef for carefully staged photo opportunities, public consumption of beef in France has dropped by 40 percent. And Greece has joined Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy in banning at least some French beef products.

The French government has been forced to offer cattle farmers more than 40-million dollars compensation for the loss in business - but the farmers have rejected the offer and promised demonstrations throughout the country.

Concerns about French beef rose dramatically after supermarket chains pulled meat from their shelves that might have come from infected cattle. It is believed that eating contaminated beef can lead to the human form of the fatal brain disease, called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.

France has been conducting random tests on cattle, something the rest of the European Union has now agreed to do. Those tests, meant to reassure the public, may have had the opposite effect - by uncovering more cases of the disease, 109 so far this year. That in turn has increased public alarm that contaminated cattle may have entered the food chain. (Signed)

NEB/PM/KL/JWH