EU CREATES TEAM TO POLICE FOOD SAFETY

By David Brown, Agriculture Editor

A TEAM of European bureaucrats is being created to police food safety throughout the EU because of the beef crisis, farmers' leaders were told yesterday.

About 120 staff of the European Commission in Brussels Have been transferred to the new agency, which is headed by Emma Bonino, the Fisheries Commissioner. The agengy will start work next month with the aim of protecting consumers from further food scares.

In addition, the commission's team of veterinary inspectors isto be increased from 43 to 202, Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales, told the NFU council in London.

"It gives some idea of the bureaucracy we will have to face," he said on the first anniversary of the Government announcement that mad cow disease might be connected to a new form of fatal brain illness in people.

Sir David said it was inevitable that Britain's efforts to persuade the`EU to lift its ban on exports of British beef would be delayed until Mrs Bonino and her team had fully studied the issue.

Some council members feared that the EU body's work would be out of step with any new food safety agency set up by Britain. Labour has pledged to form an independent agency answerable to Parliament, while the Government has said it will establish a committee headed by an independent adviser and answerable to ministers if the Tories win the election.

Sir David said it was clear that an agency of some form would be set up in Britain whatever the election's outcome.

He criticised the absence in other EU countries of the controls being implemented in Britain to protect beef quality and safety and to prevent specified parts of cattle entering the food chain.

British farmers were now suffering severely depressed prices for cattle largely because the market was inundated with imported meat produced under lesser controls. "The UK is the sink for everybody else's beef production," he said.