TWELVE years on from the height of the mad-cow disease crisis and European scientists have now paved the way for relaxing beef export controls.

The European Food Safety Authority has recommended the UK's BSE risk status should be reduced from high to moderate in line with other EU countries.

Its announcement has raised hopes that the UK beef export market, worth £520 million in 1995, could start again in earnest next year.

The authority made its ruling to reflect a rapid decline in the number of cases of the cattle brain disease. With 110 cases recorded in the first four months of this year, incidence in 2004 is set to be half of last year's figure of 610. In 1992 there were 37,000 cases.

It has further advised the European Commission that the Date-Based Export Scheme could be relaxed, removing the rule that beef for export must be from cattle more than six months old whose mothers were alive six months after they were born. The rule has restricted significant beef exports since 1996.

The authority also said that the export of cattle over 30 months old would be safe so long as the animals were born after August 1996, were properly tested for BSE and had specified risk material removed.

But the recommendations from the scientists now have to be made a reality by the Government and the EC.

The Department of Health has still not accepted recommendations from the UK Food Standards Agency to allow older cattle back into the food chain. The delay means their sale will probably not be permitted until January.

In Brussels, the UK needs a specific proposal from the EC and the agreement of other member states before it can export beef from cattle born after August 1, 1996 on the same basis as the rest of the UK.

Food and Farming Minister Lord Whitty said the authority's view was "good news for British beef".

"We will be working closely with the European Commission and other member states to ensure that controls on beef exports are eased as soon as possible."

When the shift happens it will finally mark the end of the BSE crisis, which began in April 1988 when the Government concluded that escalating incidences of the disease had probably been spread in animal feed. The EC enforced a worldwide ban on UK beef in 1996.

The human brain disease linked to BSE, Variant CJD, has killed 141 people in the UK since 1990 according to the CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh.