There should be more enforcement checks. Scientific committees must not water down assessment of risk to avoid causing alarm. Better contingency planning should be carried out. That rose slightly, to 133 in September. Scientists were hoping the disease would disappear almost entirely by next year, but whether there will ever be zero cases is impossible to say.
Some scientists think it is endemic.
Meanwhile, an outcry is growing in France as consumers increasingly suspect they, too, have been lied to. Most recently it was learned that, rather than one ton of potentially infected meat going to supermarkets in the recent past as reported in October, the French consumer fraud agency said the true amount was eight tons. President Jacques Chirac has called for BSE testing on every animal slaughtered for food in the country but Jean Glavany, the French agriculture minister, said it was not a realistic option as there were not enough vets to carry out BSE tests on the six million cows slaughtered each year. Carrefour, the supermarket chain worst hit by the beef scare, said it would conduct its own tests on all meat it put on sale. The scandal broke when a cattle trader tried to pass off an animal with mad cow disease at an abattoir in Normandy.