Cuba ready to cooperate with US in mad cow research

Saturday, January 3, 2004

HAVANA, Cuba (VNA): Cuban scientists are ready to cooperate in research related to mad cows disease, after a case of the disease was found in the US.

Director of the Cuban state food importer Alimport Pedro Alvarez said in a letter to President of the US Meat Export Federation Philip Seng, and Head of the Association of Ranchers of the United States Eric Davis that their research and development institutions in the animal health area were prepared to cooperate with their US counterparts.

Alvarez added that Cuba will not cancel its cattle purchase contracts with US suppliers. Cuba will acquire up to 100,000 head of cattle from the US when the bilateral relations become normalized.

Cuban official figures show that the value of Cuban purchases amounts to 691 million US dollars at the end of this year.

The purchases include more than 1,000 head of cattle, of which 500 are already in Cuba after passing sanitary checks and remain in quarantine. The rest will arrive once the United States solves the situation resulting from the mad cow disease case. 

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