Bush bids to play down US beef scare

13 April 2012

GEORGE Bush has tried to throw a lifeline to the beleaguered US beef industry, saying the meat was still on the Presidential menu despite the first case of mad-cow disease in the country.

'I ate beef today and I will continue to eat beef,' Bush said after a quail-hunting trip in his home state of Texas. Bush has, by contrast, used aides to issue comments on other issues of concern over the New Year break.

He said that Americans should feel comfortable eating beef as usual, and that administration officials were taking steps to safeguard the standards of hamburgers, steaks and other US staples.

The multi-billion-dollar beef industry has been thrown into turmoil by the 24 December discovery in Washington state of the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a brain-wasting disease that can spread to human beings. More than two dozen countries have banned US beef imports, which are worth $3.2 billion (£1.9 billion) a year.

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