McAleese moves to assure U.S. tourists

By Susan Falvella Garraty

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ireland’s president, Mary McAleese, will visit Texas next week, where she is expected to use the backdrop of a big beef state to tell Americans to ignore concerns over foot-and-mouth disease and visit Ireland this summer.

A Senate hearing in Washington last week focused on concerns over both foot-and-mouth, which does not affect humans, and BSE, or so-called mad cow disease, which does and is always fatal.

Experts told lawmakers that restrictions already in place make the chances for a U.S. traveler abroad contracting the BSE minimal.

"The danger of driving to the airport is greater than eating meat in Europe," said one health expert, Richard Johnson.

Last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman updated President Bush on efforts to keep foot and mouth out of the United States. She told the president that the United States has been free of foot and mouth since 1929 "and our goal is to keep it that way.”

Days before, the European Union’s point person on the foot-and-mouth crisis was rebuffed by the Bush administration in his attempt to get Washington to loosen export restrictions on untainted European meat and animal products.

EU Commissioner for Food Safety and former Irish Attorney General David Byrne failed to convince U.S. officials that a more "regionalized" ban on animal products would be appropriate at this time.

He said the U.S. should allow products from areas where there have been no outbreaks of FMD instead of the current blanket approach of banning almost all European animal product exports.

Byrne noted that if the disease struck American livestock producers in just two states, Europe would not ban exports from the entire United States.

American officials were unmoved by his logic. Secretary Veneman told reporters after their meeting that the virus afflicting animals was "not under control yet" in Europe and, therefore, the total ban on European meat imports would continue.

The ban has stopped the importing of Irish meat products, most especially pork products, into the U.S.

President McAleese, meanwhile, is not alone in attempting to get out the word that visiting Ireland is safe. Actor Sean Connery was doing the same thing for his native Scotland in Washington, D.C., last week.

Connery was also in D.C. to promote Tartan Day, a now annual celebration of Scottish-U.S. ties.