Dozens of school districts in France and neighboring Geneva, Switzerland have also banned beef from school menus. Beef prices have plunged and several slaughterhouses have closed. Incineration of cow infected by mad cow disease. Further, the Swiss Red Cross announced it was barring blood donations from people who spent more than six months in England between 1980 and 1996. As alarm spreads, the European Union's health and consumer protection commissioner, David Byrne, asked member nations to immediately increase more random testing of cow herds.
Diagnosis is made only by examination of brain tissue after death.
Across the English Channel, the Financial Times reported that Britain's rat population is at one of the highest levels on record. The National Pest Technicians Association said rats are building up resistance to rat poisons and are so smart they avoid deadly baits after seeing other rats die. The association also thinks global warming is allowing more rats to survive winters. Global Warming and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been the subject of negotiations by more than 170 countries in The Hague, Netherlands for the last two weeks. But sadly, the European Union and the United States could not agree about how to implement the 1997 Kyoto treaty that calls for the world's industrial countries to reduce their pollution levels by more than 5 percent from 1990 levels.