Fresh allegations has emerged that the European Commission tried to cover up the danger to public health of mad cow disease in the early 1990s.
Leaked letters reveal that the top civil servant responsible for farm policy in Brussels sought to limit discussions about BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease, in committees charged with managing public health and animal welfare.
The letters, written in 1993 and published in the French newspaper Liberation, will give fresh impetus to a European parliament inquiry into earlier charges of a Brussels cover-up.
Last month a leaked internal Commission memorandum claimed that the European Union's standing veterinary committee concluded in 1990 that it was ''necessary to minimise the BSE affair by using disinformation''.
The Commission's defence is that its primary objective at the time was to prevent a collapse of the beef market which was heavily in surplus. Also, it stresses, there was no scientific evidence in the early 1990s that humans could contract the disease by eating beef.
But resignations are expected if the parliamentary probe uncovers evidence of ''maladministration'' by the Commission or national governments in dealing with the dangers posed by mad cow disease.
The leaked letters implicate the Commission's top agricultural bureaucrat, Guy Legras, a Frenchman, who for 11 years has headed the agriculture department. The Commission has not denied the authenticity of the letters.
The correspondence centres on a request from Riccardo Perissich, then head of the Commission's single market division, for a joint investigation into the risks of a link between BSE and human brain disease.
