Archive Article: 2001/01/05
• ENLARGEMENT, environment and employment are the three main priorities for Sweden, which took over the six-month presidency of the EU this week. As one of the more liberal member states, the Swedes are also likely to push for continued change in the CAP. They have already highlighted the sheep regime as a strong candidate for reform.
• GERMANY was warned nine months ago that its herd was probably carrying BSE, EU food commissioner, David Byrne, told a German Sunday newspaper last weekend. The commissioner had sent the Berlin government a detailed report last March, but the warning had gone unheeded. Germany has recently confirmed its seventh BSE case. A government spokesman described the report as "highly theoretical".
• ANOTHER eight BSE casualties were reported by the French government in the last days of 2000, bringing the total for the year to 153, a fivefold rise on the previous year. About 100 of these cases emerged as a result of conventional reporting by vets, with the rest picked up under the governments post-mortem testing programme.
• ALLOWING unrestricted access to the EUs sugar market for the worlds 48 poorest nations, (as suggested in the commissions Everything But Arms proposal), would cost the sector over k1bn (£630m) in surplus disposal, according to the commissions agriculture directorate. *