(BRUSSELS) - The European Union decided on Tuesday to lift all remaining restrictions on the export of British meat, signalling the all-clear after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

"We have made this decision because we are satisfied that Britain can gain its completely foot-and-mouth-free status as from November because the outbreak has been successfully dealt with," said European Commission spokesman Michael Mann.

Last month the EU lifted the export ban on meat and livestock from Britain with the exception of the 10-kilometre (six-mile) surveillance zones around two farms in Surrey, southeast England, where the disease broke out.

Animals from that area will not be allowed onto the European market until after November 9, allowing a sufficient lapse of time since the July outbreak for other EU nations to protect their internationally recognised foot-and-mouth disease status, the Commission said in a statement.

British authorities removed the surveillance zone around the outbreak site last week.

The EU's executive arm added that the outbreak "may have been the result of biosecurity issues on the Pirbright site," a nearby centre for veterinary research.

The European Commission will carry out investigations of the outbreak area and other such laboratories across the EU in the coming months to decide whether any action is needed to avoid similar outbreaks.

Britain's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has listed a series of failings at a government-run laboratory which shares a site with a private vaccine-producing firm at Pirbright.

The site is shared between the government-run Institute for Animal Health (IAH) and Merial Animal Health, a private company.

Investigators focused on problems with the drainage system at the site, near to a series of outbreaks of the potentially devastating disease at the start of August.

The outbreaks raised the spectre of a repeat of a 2001 crisis, in which up to 10 million animals were culled and which cost Britain's economy about eight billion pounds (11.7 billion euros, 16.0 billion dollars).

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