BSE still needs attention - Commission
More effort is required to rebalance the European beef market following the drastic effect of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), more Member States must introduce the agreed measures and further measures to tackle the problem can be expected from the European Commission in the near future, the European Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler said on 29 January at the meeting of the Agriculture Council. The purchase for destruction scheme agreed in December has only been applied to any extent in two countries, Ireland and France, who account for 28 and 60 per cent of the slaughtered animals under this scheme. Spain and Luxembourg account for the remainder. Other countries have not become involved because they either have exemptions (the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland), or have requested exemptions (Austria and Belgium), or already have an over 30 month scheme in place already (UK) or have not started yet (Germany, Italy, Portugal and Greece). He urged ministers to look at the scheme as a means of balancing beef prices as Ireland and France have done and pointed to alarming drops in consumption as evidence of the need for urgent action. Up to this point, a 27 per cent drop in beef consumption has been recorded, and he said he feared that if the overproduction of 2000 is carried over to 2001, this year could see drops in consumption of over 10 per cent. 'The crisis in the beef market goes further than one might think,' he said. 'We have to assume considerable surplus on the beef market, 785,000 tonnes in 2001, if we assume a 10 per cent drop in consumption and full use of the purchase destruction scheme (500,000 tonnes).' He requested that more information be given to the Commission by the Member States on the measures being taken at national level and hinted at what the further measures suggested by the Commission may be, including early marketing premia for calves, or a reduction of the density condition for premia payments to boost extensive farming. 'The Commission will bring forward a wider ranging package of measures,' he said. Figures revealed by the Commission's Food safety DG show that while the UK, with the highest number of BSE cases (larger than all the other Member States combined) has seen significant drops in its recorded cases, the EU figure for BSE cases after excluding the UK is actually on the rise. The highest recordings outside the UK of BSE in 2000 were in France (162), Ireland (152) and Portugal (136). These remain much lower than the UK's level in 2000, 1,312 cases. But this also reflects a significant drop from the highest recorded levels in the UK in 1993 of 38,249 cases.