Brussels, 05/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has decided to lift, with effect from 3 May, the ban on British beef that has been in place since March 1996,the height of the bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) crisis. This decision comes after receiving the opinion of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health in early March (see EUROPE 9147). On 3 May, France, which, prior to the mad cow crisis, was the main EU importer of British beef, published the national decree on the definitive lifting of measures banning British beef.
The United Kingdom may now restart exports of live animals born after 1st August 1996, the date the EU decreed the ban on exports of animal feed made from meat meal and bone meal. However, cattle born before that date must not, under any circumstances, enter the EU food chain. Beef by-products made from British beef may be exported under the same conditions as for other Member States, but only if produced after 15 June 2005.
Before seeking the opinion of EU experts in March, the Commission proposed to lift the ban in September 2005, following a report from the Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) showing that the annual number of cases of BSE in the United Kingdom had fallen below 200 per million animals. According to Commission figures, cases of BSE in the UK fell from 32,280 at the height of the disease, in 1992, to 224 in 2005, with the majority of these cases in animals born before 1996.
The ban on British beef was put in place in March 1996, when mad cow disease was at its worst. On 20 March 1996, the British government acknowledged the existence of a “possible” link between BSE, which appeared in the UK in 1986, and a new human form of the disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob's disease. More than 150 cases of this new form of the disease have been recorded in the world, 140 of these in the UK. One must now wait and see how long it is before British beef is once again found on the plates of citizens of other EU countries. British producers are hoping for production of some 140,000 tonnes of beef, with the majority being for the UK market. During the years of the ban, the United Kingdom had to take supplies from outside the country, particularly from Ireland, to meet its needs. 200,000 young calves could be exported to other Member States for fattening.