THE former agriculture commissioner, Mr Ray MacSharry, gave a robust defence of his record on BSE in the early 1990s yesterday when he faced MEPs questions.
Firmly denying a suggestion from one MEP that his answers showed contempt for the European Parliament, Mr MacSharry said he intended to return to it as a member, presumably in Connacht-Ulster on the retirement of Mr Mark Killilea.
Speaking at the parliament's Special Committee of Inquiry into BSE, Mr MacSharry insisted the Commission had given the issue top priority and had accepted all the latest scientific evidence available at the time.
If there were failures to implement Community directives at British meat plants or in their identification system for animals, the responsibility lay in Britain, he said. The Commission only had 12 veterinary inspectors in 1990, he said, adding he had asked for a substantial increase in their numbers.
In combative form, the former commissioner suggested that parliament, which has budgetary authority, should look at its own role in refusing to increase staffing. He furiously warned a French far-right MEP that if he repeated outside the chamber allegations he was making about Mr MacSharry's alleged financial involvements, he "would meet him in another place".
In his opening comments to the committee, Mr MacSharry reminded MEPs that in its early days BSE had been seen by scientists largely as an animal health problem akin to scrapie which is not transmissible to humans.
"Despite this conclusion, the potential threat to human health was recognised and given priority treatment from the very beginning. There were continual discussions within the scientific committees called to deal with these issues. Any resulting recommendations on measures needed to protect public health were acted on speedily and decisively," he said.
He denied that preparations for the single market had distracted the Commission from BSE and insisted "that managing the market was never, I repeat, never given priority over measures to protect public health.
"On the question of control I was deeply disappointed to read in the evidence given to the committee that there were failures in the way the rules were applied in Britain."
While the Community was responsible for legislating, implementation of regulations was a matter for member-states. "Whatever your conclusion on this point, responsibility for the execution of the controls must rest with the UK.
"It is impossible," Mr MacSharry concluded, "to avoid evaluating the events of the early 1990s without being influenced by the discovery on new variant CJD in 1996, but I have no doubt that the protective measures taken by the Commission during my time as commissioner, during a time when the risk of the disease being transmissible to man was described by the scientists as remote, were correct and timely."
