Demand for action in BSE report

Date: 09/01/1997

THE British government will come in for the fiercest criticism when the European Parliament's temporary committee of inquiry publishes its draft report on the handling of the BSE crisis next week.

Leaked details of the report show 12 areas where the committee alleges the UK has been negligent.

But London is not alone in coming under fire. Spanish Socialist MEP Manuel Medina Ortega, who has drawn up the report, also attacks the European Commission for apparently giving greater priority to the interests of the beef market than to public safety.

But he is unlikely to call for a vote of censure against the whole Commission, feeling this would be unfair on those Commissioners not involved in formulating policy on BSE.

Medina demands that the Union learns clear lessons from the most disastrous health scare in the history of European integration.

His report calls for policies on public and animal health and food safety to be dealt with quite separately from the day-to-day management of agricultural policy markets. This, it is argued, would ensure that farming and industrial interests do not always prevail and that MEPs can play a greater role in drawing up legislation.

Medina also calls for the Maastricht Treaty article dealing with public health to be modified so that governments cannot use the 'subsidiarity' principle to oppose EU measures.

In addition, he supports the strengthening of the Veterinary Inspection Office set up recently in Ireland and calls for improvements in the way scientific committees operate.

Among 18 separate criticisms of the Commission, Medina's report accuses officials of playing down the BSE problem, leading to a policy of disinformation. He also claims that cooperation and coordination between different Commission departments was grossly inadequate.

The report says the UK failed to implement bans on feeding meat and bone meal to ruminants, did not respect embargoes on trade in potentially-infected meal and controlled the export ban on British beef poorly.

It also accuses the British of putting pressure on the Commission not to carry out BSE inspections, and claims it chose to ignore the most pessimistic scientific advice.

Other criticisms concern failure to introduce rules on cattle identification, movement registers and veterinary controls quickly enough.

The committee will discuss its findings with Commission President Jacques Santer next week, with a Parliament debate scheduled for February.