Farming Focus by Richard Foster

EU Agriculture Ministers were lobbied by placard-waving farmers as they arrived for talks on the last day of their UK summit.

About 80 farmers from the North-East of England joined the orderly demonstration protesting about the ongoing ban on British beef exports.

Their message plastered on multi-lingual posters and echoed in chants as the ministers arrived was simple: "lift the beef ban".

UK Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham, who is hosting the informal talks in Newcastle as president of the Agriculture Council, faced heckling from some of the protesters when he came out to talk to them.

But although he refused to speculate on when the ban might be lifted entirely, he said he hoped to see "further real progress" towards finalising the scheme to allow meat exports from Northern Ireland by the end of the month.

Yesterday's informal talks focused not on the beef issue but on livestock farming in "environmentally fragile" areas.

Ministers were also greeted by a two metre high rubber chicken ahead of the meeting as, in a separate demonstration, animal welfare campaigners urged them to ban battery cages.

Dutch agriculture minister Jozias Van Aartsen went over to talk to the protesting farmers.

Charles Haigh, a farmer from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, said he had been "heartened" by the minister's promise to support a lifting of the ban for all farmers when the same conditions applied in the UK as in Northern Ireland, which is set to resume exports first."It was very magnanimous of him to come out and talk to us. He seemed sincere," he said.

National Farmers' Union (NFU) officials who had co-ordinated the demonstration admitted they were disappointed by the turnout and had hoped about 200 farmers would attend.

But NFU president Ben Gill who led the protest and who had earlier joined the EU ministers for informal talks, said he was encouraged that progress towards lifting the ban was being made.

Mr Gill, who farms near Easingwold, said if proposals for a scheme to allow the export of animals born after August 1996 went before the EU Council in June, it was possible exports could resume this autumn.

He urged farmers to keep up the pressure in Westminster and Brussels.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.