The French ban on British beef could be fully lifted by Christmas following an understanding reached late on Tuesday night between the Commission, Britain and France.
A spokeswoman for the Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, Mr David Byrne, told journalists yesterday that once the French food safety agency ruled positively on the matter, in about a week, the government should be able to pass enabling legislation within a fortnight.
The unspoken assumption is that the French government would not have agreed to submit a revised proposal to its food agency without being reasonably certain that if would get a positive response.
Commission sources were also stressing that the agency was unlikely to be asked, as it was last time, if there was a zero risk associated with British beef, but rather if the risk was an acceptable one.
Mr Byrne's spokeswoman, Ms Beatte Gminder, said the letter of understanding agreed between them represented a clarification of five issues and no concessions from either the French or British side. Mr Byrne welcomed the agreement: "I am pleased that we have reached a common understanding. I hope that this will help to overcome France's objection to lifting the embargo on British beef," he said.
"What we have managed to achieve is to provide important clarifications on how the DateBased Export Scheme [DBES] will operate," he continued.
The DBES is the tight procedure under which the British BSE ban was lifted and provides for a system under which all beef can be labelled to allow it to be traced and withdrawn if necessary.
The British Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, said there had been "real progress. We hope to have a response from the French food standards agency . . . by the beginning of December."
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the understanding is the explicit acknowledgement that labelling the beef as British in French shops, rather than simply with batch numbers, is allowed. But Mr Brown said labelling was nothing new.
"The fact of the matter is that clear labelling is a condition and always was a condition of the DBES. The reason why the product has to be clearly labelled is because there has to be trace-ability within the industry," he said.
The main "clarifications" of the "protocol of understanding" are provisions on trace-ability, controls, tests, derived products, and labelling.
