Mad-cow countries can sell us their beef

Dutch and Croation beef has been cleared for importation to Australia. Source: Supplied

AUSTRALIA has reopened the door to beef imports from Europe, a decade after banning meat from countries with a history of mad cow disease.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand has ruled that consumers face a "negligible" risk of catching brain-wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from eating Croatian or Dutch beef.

"FSANZ completed BSE food safety risk assessments for these countries and concluded that the BSE risk posed to consumers from the export of beef products from these countries is negligible," Food Standards said in a statement.

"While meat from these countries can be imported, there are import certification requirements in place and in the case of Croatia, more stringent requirements."

The official green light ends a decade-long import ban on fresh or frozen beef from Europe.

New Zealand and Vanuatu - both BSE-free - have been the only countries allowed to sell beef in Australia.

Butchers and supermarkets will have to label all meat with the country of origin, under new Federal Government labelling laws to take force in July.

But restaurants and takeaway food outlets are exempt, so diners will not know if they are eating Australian or imported meat.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Department yesterday said it had not yet issued any beef import permits from Croatia or The Netherlands.

"The new arrangements ... are yet to take effect with respect to issuing new import permits," it said in a statement.

Liberal senator Bill Heffernan - a farmer who chairs the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs References Committee - yesterday called on the Federal Government to "err on the side of caution".

"I don't think Australia should accept beef from anywhere that's had a BSE outbreak, simple as that," he said.

"There's no such thing as a BSE-free herd or zone because there is no live test for the disease, and the human variant (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) can incubate for 30 years."

But Cattle Council of Australia chief executive Jed Matz yesterday said the import approval did not bother Australia's cattle farmers.

"We're supporters of free trade," he said.

"If they're safe then we welcome their imports. I don't think there would be a very large amount of meat being imported from those two countries so I wouldn't be concerned."

Eight other countries, including Mexico, Turkey, Brazil and Lithuania, have lined up to seek Food Standards approval to sell their beef in Australia.

The United States has put its application on hold.

Australia has never had a case of BSE, a brain-wasting disease in cattle that can infect people who eat contaminated beef.

The Food Standards assessment of the Dutch application found 88 cases of BSE had been detected in The Netherlands since 1997.

It rated The Netherlands as having a "negligible BSE risk".

Food Standards found that no cases of BSE have been confirmed in Croatia to date, and rated the country as a "controlled BSE risk".

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