EU, UK fail to resolve lifting of beef ban

The question of whether the EU ban on exports of beef from Northern Ireland will be lifted had still not been resolved last night. A spokesman for the European Commission said it was up to Britain to submit detailed proposals on how any partial lifting of the ban would work in practice. "The ball is in their court," he insisted.

However, the British Agriculture Secretary, Dr Jack Cunningham, was still playing his cards close to his chest on British intentions. He insisted the ball was now in the European Commission's court and that any proposal on the ban would have to be UK-wide. "The hope is for a lifting of the ban on the UK as a whole as quickly as possible."

Last week EU scientists approved anti-BSE control procedures in Northern Ireland, but the absence of a computer tracing system in the rest of the UK means it will be some time before it can get a clean bill of health.

Britain has been under pressure from Scottish producers not to regionalise the lifting of the ban.

Asked if a framework agreement for the whole of the UK which allowed beef from Northern Ireland into the world markets first would be acceptable to the British government, Dr Cunningham said such an approach was a "possible outcome" and that "half a loaf is better than no bread".

The president of the Ulster Farmers Union, Mr Walter Elliot, who was also in Brussels, was optimistic, saying Northern Ireland beef could be back on world markets before Christmas. He said "only bureaucracy and politics are holding us up. We meet the criteria and our return would be of benefit to the whole UK market."

While the Commission appears to be holding an open door to Northern Ireland beef, any proposal would still have to cross the hurdle of ministerial approval. The German Minister for Agriculture, Mr Jochen Borchert, told colleagues it was still too early to lift any part of the ban.

Meanwhile, the Commission has written to the German government asking for the closure of a German meat plant and the stepping up of inspections on several others following the discovery of re-labelled consignments of meat.

A Commission spokesman refused to elaborate pending an official response from Bonn beyond saying it appeared that the re-labelled meat may have been illegally exported from Britain. He stressed that the finds were unrelated to those reported by the Commission in Belgium in June.