French to lift UK beef ban
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Before BSE France was the UK's biggest beef market
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PARIS, France -- France says it is to lift an illegal ban on British beef, imposed six year ago over fears of mad cow disease.
The move by the French government, which is facing a potential daily fine from the European Court of Justice for not ending the embargo, follows an opinion from national food agency AFSSA that British beef exports were now safe.
"Given these facts, the prime minister has decided to lift the embargo," the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has been linked to a deadly human variant, Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (vCJD), which has so far killed more than 100 people, mostly in Britain but also some in France.
The EU ban was first imposed after links between mad cow disease and its human equivalent were found.
But France has continued its own ban for three years after the EU sanction was lifted in 1999, arguing that its own national food safety agency (AFSSA) was not convinced that British beef was safe.
During 1995, the last full year of beef exports before the BSE crisis, 274,000 tonnes of the meat worth £520 million ($808 million) were shipped abroad with £80,000 tonnes going to France - Britain's biggest market.
France refused to comply with a European Union ruling easing a ban on British beef exports in mid-1999, sparking a cross-Channel diplomatic row and calls from politicians for Britain for trade retaliation.
In July the European Commission asked the European Court of Justice to impose a fine of almost 160,000 euros a day on France for failing to comply with its earlier judgments that the ban was illegal.
