European Union Moves to Ban Exports of British Beef

In an attempt to head off a wholesale consumer panic, the European Union on Monday moved to ban all exports of British beef products until researchers can shed more light on a possible link between disease-infected cattle and a deadly brain illness in humans.

“Exports of British beef and other related products are now banned,” EU Agricultural Commissioner Franz Fischler told a packed news conference here following a daylong meeting of veterinary experts from each of the European Union’s 15 member states.

Fischler said the ban, which will go into force Wednesday when it is formally approved by the EU’s full executive commission, applies to all live animals, all beef and veal products made from animals slaughtered in Britain, cattle sperm and embryos and beef products used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

While the EU’s committee of experts, which initially recommended the ban, will reconvene today to restudy the issue after a late-night protest by British Prime Minister John Major, commission officials said there is virtually no chance the decision will be reversed.

The EU action comes five days after the British government publicized scientific evidence suggesting that 10 Britons may have contracted a degenerative brain illness by eating beef from cattle infected with a disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. The public has dubbed it “mad cow disease.”

Eight of the 10 victims referred to in the report have died.

Monday’s action came as French officials admitted that a herd of 151 cows in Brittany had been slaughtered after veterinary officials discovered eight cases of BSE. A second, slightly smaller herd is due to be destroyed later this week, officials said.

While more than 200 cases of BSE also have been reported in Switzerland, it is only in Britain that the disease has really taken hold. There, more than 160,000 cases have been detected over the past decade, according to statistics released by the British government Monday.

Although British officials have stressed that the evidence so far has not established a conclusive link between BSE and its human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the market for beef in Britain immediately collapsed following the government announcement last week. And there has been speculation that a large portion of the British herd may eventually have to be destroyed.

American-owned fast-food chains Burger King and Wendy’s on Monday followed a lead taken earlier by McDonald’s and announced they would immediately begin supplying their British restaurants with imported beef.

Meanwhile, wary consumers elsewhere in Western Europe began shifting to other meats. Fischler admitted that the ban announced Monday was in part to head off a consumer flight away from beef throughout Europe, a development that would have enormous financial consequences.

Nearly 30% of Britain’s beef production is exported, mainly to France, Italy, South Africa and Ireland. No British beef has been imported into the United States since 1989.