Clause to ban lamb?

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 1

Clause to ban lamb?

NZPA-staff corres. London The Common Market’s long-threatened sheepmeat regulation now seemed “virtually certain” to include a safeguard clause which would enable the Community to ban lamb imports from New Zealand in depressed market conditions, said the “Financial Times” yesterday.

The newspaper’s Brussels correspondent, Robin Reeves, said that according to usually reliable sources, Britain was reported to have virtually dropped her one-time staunch opposition to the inclusion of a safeguard clause. Brussels sources told the NZPA yesterday that conflicting reports oh progress towards drawing up a final regulation were circulating there. “It appears that no final decision has been taken, but there is continued pressure for a

safeguard clause,” said one source.

If the British have dropped their opposition to a safeguard clause, it would be a major change in policy. The British Government has consistently assured New Zealand that it would fight any proposal in the sheepmeat regulation that would affect New Zealand’s traditional lamb exports to Britain. New Zealand has insisted throughout that there is no need for any safeguard clause, asserting that the market is big enough to assimilate all New Zealand’s exports without disruption.

The French have led demands for a safeguard clause. The price of lamb in France is the highest in the Community — almost double that in Britain — and French producers fear that free trade in the

Community would lead to a flood of lamb and rapidly falling prices. Commission officials, according to the “Financial Times,” have said that in practice the safeguard clause would never be used against Britain’s imports of New Zealand lamb. “At most, it would be used against sudden influxes of lamb from Eastern Europe,” Reeves quoted commission officials as saying. New Zealand would regard assurances that the clause would “never” be used against New Zealand exports as being of dubious value, Reeves said. New Zealand supplied more than 40 per cent of all the lamb consumed in Britain, and the British market was still Of major importance, taking 75 per cent of all New Zealand’s lamb exports.