THE British government is split over its approach to ending the export ban on beef from Northern Ireland, it emerged yesterday.
Speaking to journalists at the end of the two day farm ministers' meeting, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, said it was clear from his discussions with the Northern Agriculture Minister, Baroness Denton, that her department and the Northern Ireland Office were pressing strongly for a separate regional approach to the Northern beef issue. Mr Yates, who met the Ulster Farmers' Union last week, met Baronesss Denton on Monday night.
The British government, however, is still adamantly opposed to making a separate case for farmers in Northern Ireland and Scotland, whose production is largely grass based and dramatically less affected by BSE. Only some 4,000 head are likely to be slaughtered in the North under the selective cull of at risk animals.
EU and British officials admit that the standards of certification of Northern herds are already as such as to be likely to meet EU standards for a lifting of the ban but that it will be months before certification in the rest of Britain is likely to be up to scratch.
Mr Yates said the Irish presidency would strongly welcome a British initiative to have the North treated separately and he believed from soundings that there would be considerable support in the Commission for this. The case was particularly strong for Northern Ireland, he said, because "Northern Ireland is surrounded by water".
Mr Yates insisted that any initiative on the issue was entirely the prerogative of the British government.
But any change in position by Britain on regionalisation will be academic if the government decides to repudiate the Florence agreement on the framework for lifting the beef ban. Speculation increased yesterday that it would do so following an unambiguous signal from the Commission that it saw no case for a reduction in the agreed selective cull of 140,000 at risk animals.
Mr Yates also made clear that the Florence agreement was a package and the selective cull was part of the preconditions for any lifting of any part of the export ban. "The ball is now very firmly in the British court," Mr Yates said.
The British Agriculture Secretary, Mr Douglas Hogg, was told by the Farm Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, that his "new evidence" from the recent Oxford statistical projection on the likely decline of BSE had in fact been well known at the time of the Florence meeting.
It had been well understood that BSE would disappear from the British herd by the early years of the next century, he said, but the selective cull was targeted at affected or potentially affected animals and aimed at reassuring the public.
The "new" evidence made no difference to the cull's rationale he said.
Mr Hogg made no specific request for a review of the cull but asked colleagues to study the evidence. The chairman of the meeting, Mr Yates, however, insisted that any ministerial discussion of the issue would have to await Commission and scientific assessment of specific British proposals. That, he said, was the procedure agreed at Florence.
A spokesman for Mr Hogg said only that the minister would bed reporting back to the cabinet.
Meanwhile, it has become clear that some element of the funding gap for a package of measures aimed at rebalancing the beef market may be met through unspent funds from the 1996 agriculture budget.
Mr Fischler has been asked by ministers to report to the Killarney informal ministerial meeting next week on how much of the current underspend of £1 billion will still be available after the financial year end of October 15th, and whether legal means could be found to carry the funding over into 1997.
However, both Mr Fischler and Mr Yates stressed that the eventual figure was likely to be far smaller and would not obviate the controversial necessity of digging into the cereals budget to pay for the package.
Mr Yates said he hoped it would also be possible in Killarney to agree to raising the ceiling of intervention to 700,000 tonnes.
The failure of the ministers to reach any decision on the package of measures for rebalancing the beef market was deplored by the ICMSA president, Mr Frank Allen.
He accused the farm ministers of "dithering" and demanded that Mr Yates "ensure that decisiveness replace the gamesmanship which has been going on between member states".
