THE new evidence of transmission of BSE from cow to calf released by the British authorities this week may endanger the peace plan arranged by the EU summit n Florence, which averted a serious, threat to the stability of the Union.
The Commission's request to the British government to consider the possibility of expanding the selective slaughter plan agreed in Florence has been greeted with anger by sections of the Tory party opposed to the Union.
And yesterday the agriculture minister for North Rhine Westphalia, Ms Barbel Hohn, called for a total ban on British beef to be reimposed by the Commission.
She told the BBC she hoped the EU would take appropriate action to reverse its decision to ease the ban on UK beef by products, tallow, semen and gelatin.
The lifting of the EU ban on these products had eased the way for a return to normal working in the Union after Britain adopted a policy to obstruct business because of the ban.
The British, who had received strong support from Ireland throughout the crisis, had been working on the understanding that the ban on its products would be removed quickly.
But on Thursday the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, said the new evidence of maternal transmission would delay the rolling back of the second stage of the ban which would have allowed the British to export embryos and semen from British cattle.
Now it will fall to Mr Yates as president of the EU Farm Ministers to once again broker a deal in Europe to prevent unilateral action by Britain against the Union.
Following receipt of a letter from the Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, asking Britain to reconsider the slaughter plan agreed in Florence six weeks ago, the British Ministry of Agriculture said it would examine how many extra animals might have to be slaughtered.
But Tory Euro sceptics, outraged by the original EU ban, rounded on their government for its apparent willingness to concede more ground to Brussels over the beef issue.
A leading Conservative MP, Ms Teresa Gorman, said Britain should stop trying to appease Europe in a vain attempt to get the EU's worldwide ban on British beef exports lifted.
"If we killed all the cattle in the country we would not satisfy Herr Fischler. Better to turn our backs on Europe and concentrate on saving our domestic market, which accounts for 90 per cent of sales," she said.
At the June EU summit Britain agreed to slaughter the more than 140,000 cattle born between 1989 and 1993 in herds that have been hit by BSE.
This cull has not begun yet, as the measure has to be approved by the British parliament, which resumes on October 14th after the summer recess.
The British government has also undertaken to cull and remove from the food chain all cattle aged more than 30 months which are thought to be most likely to have contracted the disease from contaminated feed. By last Thursday, 315,207 cattle had been slaughtered under this plan.
In Ireland, the Department of Agriculture admitted yesterday that the number of cases of BSE in the national herd could rise to 30 this year, the highest annual total to date since the disease was first identified here in 1989.
The rate of detected infection in the Irish herd is very low, only 135 out of a herd of seven million animals.