Luxembourg, 06/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Court of First Instance will statute on request from thirteen Portuguese fighting bull farmers who challenge an embargo that the Commission had instituted in the context of the fight against spongiform encephalopathy. The Commission justified its export ban on Portuguese bulls towards France and Spain due to the failings it had noted in Portugal. The risks of a spread in the Mad Cow disease being, according to it, "considerable."
The Court will have to say on a more general level is these animals constitute a separate category of bovines that must benefit from special measures to fight against BSE, as well as the support of farmers. Though the Court will first have to statute over whether it can receive their case. The farmers must fulfil very strict conditions to act before the European courts namely to be "directly" and "individually" concerned. The Commission challenges the possibility of receiving the case. For it, only the farmers from the agricultural company Agricola Arinhos and Jose de Barahona Nuncio have proven that their bulls were written into the Portuguese genealogical book of fighting bulls. The Commission feels that the other producers only breed ordinary bovines, which are submitted to the general rules of the 1998 embargo on the export of Portuguese bovines.
For the farmers: - the Commission took its decision without having sent inspectors to examine the "specific system" of checks to which bulls are submitted; - no cases of BSE has ever been found in fighting bulls; - the French and Spanish measures, very strict, foresee the incineration of dead animals; - the embargo was disproportionate… according to the Commission, the farmers have not proven what they are asserting; - the hygiene systems were not designed with a view to BSE.
EUROPE recalls that the provision challenged by the fighting bull farmers was only a measure taken in the framework of the 1998 general embargo. It was ended on 6 June 2000.