New demand on beef culling plans

The French agriculture minister, Philippe Vasseur, said last night that Britain would have to submit to Brussels full details of its planned slaughter programme before the European Union embargo on British beef could be lifted, writes Mary Dejevsky.

He said so far Britain had not given sufficient detail of what was proposed; it had to submit the programme in its entirety.

This requirement, made public by Mr Vasseur during an interview on France's main weekly political programme, was the third of three conditions he said should be met before there was any prospect of France agreeing to the embargo being lifted.

The first was that a European committee of scientists should be formed to examine the current state of knowledge about BSE and the possible links with Creutzfeld-Jacob disease. The second that there should be a separate decision on what to do about exports of beef by-products like gelatine and components of cosmetics.

The minister was speaking a day after John Major had given vent to his frustration with the attitude of Britain's European partners over the beef embargo.