EU vets vote to ease strict export restrictions on British beef
However, the EU's Standing Veterinary Committee, whose opinions are usually rubber-stamped by the European Commission, has also called for more testing for the disease in Britain's herd, the EC said in a statement.
Under current regulations, meat going to the export and UK domestic markets are segregated through different processing plants and two slaughterhouses, giving foreign buyers more assurance over the origin of the beef they purchase.
Following the vets' decision, export plants registered under the so-called date-based export scheme should, in the future, also be allowed to supply the domestic market.
"There is scientific evidence to show that British veal meat and embryos pose no BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) risk any more and the move to give slaughterhouses and cutting plants the possibility to work for the domestic market will make them more viable," one EU official told Reuters.
The committee also voted to ease the rules which restrict British exports to sales of meat off-the-bone. Meat from six and nine-month-old animals, such as veal, will be able to be exported on the bone, the form considered the highest risk for transmission of the disease to humans in infected animals.
Bovine embryos were also authorised for export, the statement said.
The vote was taken on Wednesday, on the same day the European Commission decided to take France to the European Court of Justice for a second time for failing to lift a ban on British beef imports. The Commission wants the court to slap a daily fine of some 160,000 on France. The court will consider the suggestion but could impose a different level of fines and may take up to 15 months to decide.
Before a British ban on exports in March 1996, at the height of a the mad-cow crisis, France was a key market for British beef, taking 115,000 tonnes worth £260m in 1995.
The ban was ended in the summer of 1999, but since then only beef meeting special criteria can be exported. The restrictions have limited British shipments to a trickle.
In a separate move, the veterinary committee voted to tighten-up British mad-cow disease testing in a bid to better evaluate the number of cases of the brain-wasting disease in the country. The panel voted to extend BSE testing to all cattle destined for slaughter aged three-and-a-half years and born after August 1996. Under current rules in Britain, just those cattle born in the year August 1996 to 1997 aged more than 30 months old are tested.
In the rest of Europe all cattle over 30 months must be tested for mad-cow disease and all 15 nations must test all dead or dying cattle called fallen cattle for the deadly disease.
Beate Gminder, spokeswoman for EU Health Commissioner David Byrne, said the decision was not a public health move because those cattle were not destined for consumption.
Beef contaminated with BSE or mad-cow disease has been blamed for causing a similar brain wasting condition in humans. More than 100 people have died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), mostly in Britain.
