EU Ends 10-Year Mad Cow Ban On UK Beef
11:36 AM, 09 Mar 2006
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European Union 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 ban ravaged Britain's beef industry: its last full year of exports was in 1995 when shipments to the EU amounted to 274,000 tonnes, worth STG520 million (US$904.5 million). The main market was France.
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 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.
