Enlarge imageBy Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU food safety experts agreed on Wednesday to lift a 10-year beef export ban imposed on Britain at the peak of the 1990s mad cow scare, giving a boost to its struggling beef industry, the EU executive said.
"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, in line with scientific and veterinary advice," 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.
The vote to lift the ban by the experts, representing the EU’s 25 member countries, was unanimous.
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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.
Some 150 people also fell victim to the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, after eating tainted meat.
Britain had already fulfilled the first precondition for lifting the embargo with a moderate risk status for BSE of fewer than 200 cattle per million per year affected with the disease.
The European Parliament now has 30 days to examine the experts’ 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, meat industry officials say.
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.
Britain’s last full year of beef exports was in 1995 when shipments to the EU amounted to some 274,000 tonnes, worth 520 million pounds at the time. The main market was France, which took 80,000 tonnes.
Several schemes have been put in place to enable Britain to continue to export beef but trade has been very limited.
