EU Farm Ministers yesterday cleared the way for the lifting of the British beef ban 32 months after it was imposed. A spokesman for the EU Commission said last night that British beef should now be back on the market by March 1999.
The decision was welcomed by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who said that it was very much in Ireland's interest to see a normalisation of the markets.
The lifting of the ban was subject to very strict safeguards, he said.
The move was opposed by Germany, with France, Austria, Spain and Luxembourg abstaining. "If there is no absolute security we have to vote against," the Green German Minister, Mr Karl-Heinz Funke, said. "Protection of the consumer must come first and Mad Cow disease has not been completely eradicated from Britain," he said.
Although the vote does not represent the required qualified majority, it was a simple majority and, under the complicated EU "commitology" rules the Commission is now entitled to enact the measure itself. It will do so either tomorrow or tomorrow week, a Commission spokesman said.
He said that once the decision was formally taken the British could request EU inspection of the abattoirs nominated to handle beef for export and it was likely that British beef would be back on the world markets by February or March.
The decision will allow the export of animals born after August 1st, 1996, aged between six and 30 months, that have been clearly identified and traced throughout their lives. All beef for export will also have to have been deboned in an abattoir specifically licensed for exports. The President of the National Farmers' Union, Mr Ben Gill, said that the decision "will be a huge psychological boost to farmers, with the desperation of recent times turning into cheers of jubilation".
But farmers face an uphill battle to get their beef accepted by consumers, as Northern Ireland producers have discovered.
Although allowed back on the market in September they are currently selling only some 20 to 30 tons a week abroad compared to the 1,000 tons before the ban, according to Mr Phelim O'Neill of the Northern Ireland Livestock and Meat Commission.
The BSE crisis has cost the British taxpayer some £4.6 billion. Since the peak year of 1992 when 36,000 cases were diagnosed the number of cases have been brought down to an expected 1,000 this year. Some four million animals have been slaughtered since March 1996 when the export ban was introduced.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, first diagnosed in 1986, causes neuropathological conditions in the brains of animals. The disease is believed to have originated in the feeding of improperly treated meat and bone meal to cattle and has been linked to the development in humans of a similar condition, Creuzfeldt Jacob Disease (CJD).
Twenty-nine people have died in the UK of the so-called "newvariant CJD", and one in France.
PA adds:
There are crucial formalities still to be completed before the despatch of the first beef consignments to leave the UK since March 1996.
"We are talking about the first half of next year before the ban can be lifted - and the first half of the year is a moveable feast," said one EU official.
As part of yesterday's deal the UK government is committed to complete an extra cattle cull in addition to the 4.2 million animals slaughtered already.
