Who's to blame over beef?

Could British Ministers end up in a French court over the BSE crisis?

That would seem to be one consequence of a lawsuit to be filed in a Paris court, on behalf of the families of two French citizens who died of CJD, the human variant of "mad cow" disease.

The suit accuses the French, British and European authorities of "not having taken concrete and effective measures to prevent the spread of the epidemic and to limit the consequences for humans".

There have been only three cases of CJD in France, but there is something close to panic as the extent of the problem in the French food chain becomes apparent.

This recalls the scandal of the contaminated blood which led to a number of French Government ministers appearing in court. This morning Italy decided to ban imports of cattle and beef on the bone from France.

Failure

Olivier Duplessy is a spokesmen for the the families of the two French CJD victims and he outlined at a news conference this morning their case against the British and French governments.

What the victims accuse the French - and also British of, is failing to halt the contamination of the human food chain with the mad cow infection BSE.

Francoise Zimmeray, MEP and French Lawyer said the families were filing for a charge of 'empoisonment' rather than manslaughter, a rare course of legal action in France.

In another development, this morning the Italians followed in the footsteps of the Polish, Hungarian and Russian governments in banning Frech beef on the bone. On the World at One, the Italian Agriculture Minsiter, Alfonzo Pecoraro Scanio defended his government's action.

Hysterical blame

The Agriculture Minister announced the ban in Rome this morning, after consumer and farmer groups had called on the government to block imports after French supermarkets said they had sold beef potentially contaminated with BSE.

President Chirac of France has already expressed his regret about Italy's decision. The Labour MEP Philip Whitehead, who is a member of the European parliament's consumer protection committeee told this programme that the whole affair laid bare the liabilities of the Commission over the whole BSE affair. They were he said, pretty negligent over the British crisis, but the last thing we now need, is a "hysterical exchange of blame".