THE British government was in danger of "shooting itself in the foot" if it pursued retaliatory action against its European partners over BSE, the Minister for Agriculture warned last night.
"Such actions would not be in any way beneficial to the British to go down this road and Britain itself will be the biggest loser should this happen," said Mr Yates.
Speaking on his return from Brussels, where farm ministers failed to remove any part of the ban on British beef or beef byproducts, the Minister said he was confident that if reason prevailed, a portion of the ban could be lifted fairly quickly.
"If Britain pursues the scientific route and prepares a programme to deal with the problem, I can see an easing of the ban perhaps even before the Irish presidency of the EU begins in July."
What had happened in Brussels was "not a Brit bashing exercise", he added.
However, the Minister said he was "less optimistic" about a total removal of the ban before the end of the year than he was before he travelled to Brussels last Sunday.
Real progress on the partial easing of the ban could be made if Britain "fine tuned" its slaughter policy and Mr Yates pledged to do all he could to resolve the situation when he takes on the presidency of the Farm Council on July 1st.
The Minister said there seemed to be no comprehension in Britain that farmers in Germany, France and Italy had suffered very severely when beef consumption was hit by a problem created in Britain.
Mr Yates, who had supported a partial lifting of the ban on gelatine and tallow from Britain, said he envisaged the ban being lifted in stages on British produce.
One of those stages might be, he said, a removal of the ban on beef and beef products from Northern Ireland if infected herds in the North were destroyed in the same way as in the Republic.
Mr Yates added that because of the crisis the Commission would be conducting a total review of the European beef regime and it was fortunate that this would happen during the Irish presidency.
While the whole question of BSE would be dealt with at the emergency meeting of the farm ministers in Luxembourg on June 3rd and 4th, so too would the issue of compensation for the beef industry.
He expected that a full package, which would adequately compensate Europe's beef producers, would be in place by early July.
Meanwhile, talks continued between the rendering industry and the meat factories in an effort to find a solution to the problems faced by the renderers when the meat and bonemeal markets collapsed after the BSE crisis.
Progress was reported in the discussions which are taking place against the backdrop of the Government's refusal to give any more financial assistance to the industry since yesterday. It had provided £2.5 million to the sector to help it dispose of 10,000 tonnes of rendered material.