Brown goes one-to-one to get beef ban lifted

25 September 1998

Brown goes one-to-one to get beef ban lifted

By Jonathan Riley

FARM minister Nick Brown is to press for getting the beef export ban lifted by meeting his EU counterparts on a one-to-one basis.

Returning from the informal European Union Farm Council in Austria this week, Mr Brown said there had already been encouraging talks.

The beef export ban was imposed on the UK by the European Union at the height of the BSE crisis in March 1996. It was lifted for beef exports from Northern Ireland earlier this year.

Mr Brown, who hopes to get the ban totally lifted by Christmas, will now to fly to a number of EU capitals to persuade individual ministers that British beef is safe.