Britain warned its European Union partners Tuesday to tighten their controls on beef processing to stamp out mad cow disease or risk an import ban.
Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham said he would urge fellow farm ministers in Brussels later Tuesday to adopt the same stringent health standards as Britain in their slaughterhouses.
"I shall lay orders in the House of Commons to ensure beef imported to Britain must be subject to the same treatment...the same rigorous safeguards for public health as our own beef in this country, or it will not be allowed into the country," Cunningham told BBC radio.
"I'm on very strong grounds in European policy terms and in safeguarding the health of the British people to do exactly that, and that's what I will do," he added.
Cunningham said Britain had raised hygiene standards since the EU slapped a worldwide ban on its beef exports in March 1996 following evidence that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), could probably be transmitted to humans.
Britain now had the highest standards in Europe and it was only reasonable, on grounds of science as well as fairness, to expect imports from the EU to come up to the same mark, he said.
Cunningham wants the rest of the EU to emulate British slaughterhouses by removing and destroying the brain, spinal cord, spleen and other parts of cattle most at risk of carrying BSE.
Britain's EU partners, with a much lower incidence of BSE, have so far rejected such sweeping safeguards as unnecessary.
Cunningham said he was confident Britain's new Labor government, which came to power on May 1, was winning the argument but was unsure whether he would have majority support this week.
Cunningham said: "It's pretty close. We have worked very hard since May 1 to change opinion in the European Union. We have very strong scientific and medical support on this issue.
"I'm reasonably optimistic that we may get very close. I'm not saying we will win the vote, but it will be very close."
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