(BRUSSELS) - The vast majority of European Union states are opposed to lifting an import ban on US poultry, an EU official said Monday, days after the European Commission said it would propose scrapping the measure.

Agriculture ministers from 21 of the EU's 27 countries voiced opposition at a meeting in Brussels with the remaining six not expressing a position one way or another, the official said.

The views articulated at the meeting fly in the face of a drive by EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen to lift the ban, in place since 1997 over health fears about a chlorine-washing process common in the United States.

The issue has been a source of contention in EU-US trade relations and has stirred tensions within member states.

France, Europe's biggest poultry producer, has led opposition to scrapping the ban, which French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier described as "a pretty symbolic issue."

"The United States can do what they want at home but European consumers have other demands. They want checks all along the production chain and not a brutal disinfection at the end of the chain," he said.

The US food industry uses the chlorine washing process on its poultry to kill off bacteria, including salmonella, before it reaches consumers' plates.

EU veterinary experts have favoured hygiene controls throughout the hatching and rearing cycle to reduce the chances of the bacteria developing in the first place.

The prospect of lifting of the ban was only made possible after a new European Food Safety Authority assessment last month.

It found that the four antimicrobial substances used in the US for cleaning poultry carcasses -- chlorine dioxide, acidified sodium chlorite, trisodium phosphate and peroxyacids -- represented "no safety concern within the proposed conditions of use."

EU Health Commissioner Androula Vassilou said she considered current arrangements to be appropriate, but stopped short of saying that she was against lifting the ban.

"In my opinion what we have in place in Europe at the time being is a very good hygienic process from the farm to the plate (...) in which our farmers and producers have put a lot of investment," she said.

While obliged to produce a proposal, Vassilou said that it would be strictly grounded in the available scientific information and that input from member states' experts would be taken into account.

EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council, 19 May 2008

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