(22 Feb 2001) Eng/French/Nat
France's Agriculture Salon is traditionally a show case for nation's famed gastronomical excellence.
The show in a Paris exhibition center got underway this week (Sunday 18) in the presence of French President Jacques Chirac and is expected to welcome more than half a million people .
French breeders welcome the opportunity to show off their champion livestock in prize-winning contests which draw the crowds of fans and even potential customers.
But this year, the electricity of the show is dimmed as the country is in the grips of a beef crisis that's rocked the nation's farming and beef industry.
Fears over BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy ) and the human strain of the brain-wasting disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease have over the past few months caused a precipitous decline in the consumption of French beef and a virtual collapse in French exports.
In the wake of this 35 percent fall in consumption, beef producers and retailers went to great lengths to assure customers that their beef was safe.
Signs attesting to quality were all over the expo particularly at the McDonald's stand, whose presence at the show itself, was already quite controversial.
SOUNDBITE (French):
"French Agriculture, and French farmers who produce meat have hit rock bottom. Bovine-animals are not being sold because nowadays, the consumer doesn't totally trust French beef. At the same time, our exportation borders are closed. Our meat buyers, the Middle East for instance, don't buy French meat anymore because of the psychosis."
SUPER CAPTION: Pascal Ferey, Spokesman, FNSEA (France's largest national farmers' union)
Already in trouble, the French beef industry was dealt another blow last week, when France's food safety agency, AFSSA, called for tightened safeguards on sheep and goat products. in the light of "hypothetical" risks.
Based on lab tests, the agency felt there was a "hypothetical" risk that these products could - like beef - be contaminated with BSE.
Chirac lambasted the agency which recommended that brains from sheep and goats aged more than six months be banned - currently it's in effect for those aged more than one year.
Many of the sheep breeders seemed unconvinced by the recommendation although one of the prize winners saw fit to downplay them in front of the crowds.
SOUNDBITE (French)
"Our sheep, I think is today the healthiest of all the animals in France, the one that eats grass on the prairies all over France. Whether it's prairies or on the vast mountains. I think that our sheep do not need these problems. "
SUPER CAPTION: Lionel Richard, Sheep Breeder
His fellow breeders applauded his spirited defence of their industry.
SOUNDBITE:(French)
"Today, no one can say - neither the scientists, nor others, if in the French there is this problem. Some experimentations were conducted in laboratory. No analysis has been conducted on the French livestock ."
SUPER CAPTION: Lionel Richard, Sheep Breeder
Meanwhile, at this national show dedicated to French products, a lone British stand stood out from afar.
The manager of this brand of British livestock feels that having vanquished their own beef crisis, the British are now in a position to teach their European counterparts how to do it.
SOUNDBITE: (ENGLISH)
SUPER CAPTION: W. Henry E. Lewis, Livestock Export Marketing Manager for Meat and Livestock Commission
But his confidence may have been premature.
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