British beef to get all-clear
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• Within the next two weeks livestock and refrigerated hauliers should receive notice that the European Union ban on British beef exports will be liked early next year. The expected all-clear for boned British beef and British calves is expected to follow a meeting of the EU's 15 agriculture ministers on 23-24 November.
It will end nearly three years of turmoil for British hauliers. When health fears prompted the European Commission to ban British beef in March 1996 British hauliers lost the annual export of some 200,000 tonnes of beef and 340,000 calves. The Road Haulage Association estimated at the time that the ban was costing its members more than £300,000 a week, forcing many of thern to slash the size of their fleets. Once the loan is lifted it will be legal to export boneless beef; products from animals born after 1 August 1996 (when the feeding of meat and bone meal was banned in the UK); and calves aged between six and 30 months.