Enlarge imageBy Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British beef can return to Europe’s shops and restaurants after a 10-year absence after EU food safety experts agreed on Wednesday to lift an export ban that was imposed at the height of the 1990s mad cow crisis.
British beef exports to the European Union were halted in 1996 as brain-wasting Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as mad cow disease, spread through the country.
The EU ban ravaged Britain’s beef industry, which saw its last full year of exports in 1995 when shipments to the bloc amounted to some 274,000 tonnes, worth 520 million pounds at the time. The main market was France.
Some 150 people also fell victim to the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, after eating tainted meat.
"This
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is excellent news for the British beef industry. This EU decision is a vindication of the controls on BSE and our efforts to eradicate the disease," Margaret Beckett, farm and environment minister, said in a statement."British farmers produce high quality beef which will be in demand across Europe once the ban is lifted. We know our beef is at the very least as safe as beef produced elsewhere in the EU."
BSE cases have fallen sharply in Britain from a peak of 37,280 in 1992 to 161 in the first 10 months of 2005. A main condition for lifting the ban was for annual cases of cattle affected with the disease to be fewer than 200 per million.
"The UK has made great strides in tackling this disease, and has met all of the criteria that were set for the lifting of the beef export ban," EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection Markos Kyprianou said in a statement.
"We must now acknowledge this and resume normal trade in this area," he said.
HUGE BOOST
The European Parliament now has 30 days to examine the experts’ unanimous decision which also applies to British exports of live cattle and calves to the rest of the EU.
While it cannot stop the ban being lifted, the EU assembly could exert political pressure on the European Commission, the EU executive, to withdraw its proposal.
If all goes smoothly, as expected, British beef could start to return to EU supermarket shelves in late April or early May.
Britain would then be able to export live cattle born after August 1, 1996, and bovine meat and products produced after June 15, 2005, under the same terms as other EU member states.
British farmers hailed the EU decision as long overdue.
"The return of Scotch beef to European dinner tables is a huge boost for farmers, the rural economy and European consumers," said John Kinnaird, president of National Farmers Union Scotland.
"It is just reward for the massive amount of work the Scottish beef sector has put in over the last ten years to escape the dark shadow cast by BSE," he said in a statement.
Several schemes have been put in place to enable Britain to continue to export beef but trade has been very limited.
(additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Nigel Hunt in London)
