Enlarge imageBy Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British beef can return to Europe’s shops and restaurants following a 10-year absence after EU food safety experts agreed on Wednesday to end 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), or mad cow disease, spread through the country.
The EU ban ravaged the country’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. The main market was France.
"This 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.
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"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."
One of the EU’s main conditions for lifting the ban was for Britain to be able to report fewer than 200 cases of cattle affected with the disease per million adult animals per year.
BSE cases dropped sharply in Britain from a peak of 37,280 in 1992 to 161 in the first 10 months of 2005.
Some 150 people have died from the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, after eating tainted meat.
"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.
Although BSE remains present in the EU -- Sweden reported its first ever case last week -- incidence of the disease has fallen sharply since the crisis peaked in the early 1990s.
"The curve is really decreasing and there are positive signs the crisis is behind us," one European Commission official said.
"There are still some new cases but the vast majority are old cows born a long time ago. Perhaps we’ll never get to zero (cases) but in a few years time we should be at a very low level," he told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
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 10 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)
