US to resume Irish beef imports as 'first step' to lifting EU ban

(BRUSSELS) - The European Union said Monday the United States will resume beef imports from Ireland as a "welcome first step" to lifting its ban on EU beef exports imposed in 1998 due to mad cow disease.

The easing of the standoff over beef imports comes as the US and EU are trying to negotiate a huge free trade deal, which would be the world's biggest creating a market of one billion consumers.

The EU urged the United States to act "expeditiously to extend the approval (for Ireland) to the rest of the European Union," according to a joint statement from EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan.

The US Department of Agriculture announced that "the US will progressively re-open its market to exports of beef from the European Union, starting with the Republic of Ireland," the commissioners said.

"This re-opening of the market is a welcome first step to abolish the disproportionate and unjustified US ban that followed the BSE crisis of the 1990s, and to re-establish normal trading conditions," they said in the statement.

Mad cow disease -- officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- causes a brain-destroying disorder in humans, with Britain worst affected in the late 1980s and 1990s.

"It is now desirable that the US acts expeditiously to extend the approval to the rest of the European Union and to fully bring their import conditions in line with international standards," the commissioners said.

The European Commission, the EU executive arm, said in November 2013 that United States would lift the ban, although it would take several months to do so.

Ireland -- along with the Netherlands and Britain -- accounted for 77 percent of EU beef exports to the US before the ban was imposed in 1998.

The United States had imposed on the EU standards that went beyond the recommendations of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in response to mad cow disease.

The sale of beef and other agricultural products is a bone of contention in EU-US negotiations towards an ambitious free-trade agreement, known as TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact).

Europeans have shown particular worry over whether the deal would force the region to import now-banned US beef treated with hormones.