EU leaders call for safe food chain

Europe's leaders today called for a "safe and sustainable" food chain to restore consumer confidence in the wake of the foot-…

Europe's leaders today called for a "safe and sustainable" food chain to restore consumer confidence in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

At the end of their two-day summit in Stockholm they backed the slaughter-and-burn policy adopted by Britain and urged non-EU countries not to overreact to the outbreak by closing down all of Europe's meat export markets.

The declaration on the foot-and-mouth outbreak amounted to just one paragraph in the fourteen pages of final conclusions.

But the issue had dominated discussions between the fifteen leaders, overshadowing a new push for sweeping economic reforms designed to turn the EU into the world's most dynamic economy by 2010.

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The BritishPrime Minister Mr Tony Blair, anxious to return to mastermind the growing fight against the disease, abandoned his normal summit press conference and was expected to visit one of the blighted rural areas of the country before heading home to London.