EU farm ministers remained deeply divided after talks last night on how to tackle mad cow disease problem as foot-and-mouth threatens the European agricultural sector.
After some eight hours of talks the ministers failed to agree on measures to contain mad cow or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and to rescue the EU's crumbing beef market, according to one official.
As they argued another potentially even more crippling problem was looming for the European agriculture sector. For Britain foot-and-mouth disease is already a very alarming reality.
In London British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair admitted the outbreak was "extremely serious" as the number of cases nearly doubled despite tough measures.
Farmers started to burn thousands of animals in a battle to limit the impact of the disease which has caused a scare throughout Europe. There have also been calls for visitors not to travel to the countryside for fear of transporting the virulent virus via their clothes, cars or other means.
Fears from British farmers' leaders of a "nightmare scenario" appeared to be coming true yesterday.
Foot-and-mouth found at a farm in Devon owned by a sheep- dealer who exports animals to Europe prompted fears the disease might have already crossed the Channel.
An increasing number of countries are taking action to protect themselves.
Switzerland has banned all imports of British animals. Poland, Russia and Singapore as well as Ireland had already imposed their own bans.
More than 3,000 animals, mainly sheep and deer, were slaughtered in the Netherlands at the weekend as a precaution.
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia announced it would destroy some 400 sheep after confirming some imported animals had come from a British farm where the disease had been detected.
Belgium banned the movement of sheep and goats on Saturday, while French authorities have located some 47,000 recently imported British sheep and are monitoring them.
Stockholm has banned imports of uncooked meat, milk products or other products from hoof animals by travellers returning to Sweden from Britain.
While the foot-and-mouth problem was rapidly rising to the top of their agendas, the 15 EU agricultural ministers meeting in Brussels stuck largely to the scheduled task of thrashing out a deal on handling BSE but without success.
Some EU members, including Denmark and Germany, rejected the idea of a programme of supplementary destruction of cattle. They called instead for measures favoured by the Netherlands to do away with government intervention schemes such as obligatory buy-back when prices fall below a certain level, the official said.
Other countries, including France and Spain, favored destruction of cattle to reduce supply and bolster prices.
After the meeting the Swedish presidency of the European Union spoke of the "inability" of some member-states to respond positively to European Commission proposals to reverse the fall in beef prices throughout the EU - up to 50 per cent in some countries.
AFP