By Janet McEvoy

STRASBOURG, France Jan 15 (Reuter) - European Commission President Jacques Santer denied on Wednesday that it had ever put the interests of the beef market before public health or tried to play down the dangers of madcow disease. But he told a European parliament committee of inquiry into the crisis caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that lessons had been learned and he proposed a number of internal reforms to deal with such problems better in the future. However, his proposals failed to lift a threat of parliamentary censure hanging over his head over charges of negligence in dealing with the crisis. "My experience over the past two years at the head of the Commission makes me refuse the idea according to which we would have given priority to the market to the detriment of public health or carried out a deliberate policy of disinformation," Santer said in a prepared speech to the committee. "That is not the case I can assure you. In all our discussions in the Commission our aim was to protect

transparency and follow the scientific line and to avoid any risk for human health." The chairman of the committee, Reimer Boege, said it could still censure the Commission unless Santer came up with more detailed answers by February 19, when the committee's draft report is to be put to the full European parliament. Belgian Socialist deputy Jose Happart said after the meeting that deputies were unimpressed by Santer's performance and, unless the full parliament acted, he would personally seek the 63 signatures necessary to censure the Commission. "Sixty-three signatures will not be hard to get. I do not think Mr Santer's performance today will have dissuaded anyone," he told a news conference. The committee's draft report, which has yet to be finalised, accused the Commission of trying to play down the dangers of BSE and charged Britain with negligence on 13 counts. BSE, more commonly known as madcow disease, caused consumer panic and a crisis in the beef industry when Britain said last year there was a poss

ibility that it could be transmitted to humans in the form of Creutzfeld Jakob Disease. Santer admitted that due to the uncertainty at the time -- when BSE was considered to be an animal disease and scientists themselves had hesitated over what to do -- it had been difficult to know how to react to the crisis. To respond to the lessons learned, he said the Commission proposed to separate responsibility for agricultural policy and food safety, bringing the latter underone roof rather than several as at present. The responsibility might be given to European Commissioner for Consumer Policy Emma Bonino, who made a favourable impression when she addressed the inquiry committee last month. Santer also said an independent European agency should be set up to ensure that those applying the rules and those making sure they were applied were not one and the same. "Here I want a clear separation between the authority which is responsible for the legislation and that which is responsible for checking and controlling the

correct application of the legislation on the ground," he said. He noted that EU governments had been reluctant to set up such an agency in the past, but he would try to persuade them of its virtues.