Britain's farm ministry said on Tuesday it would decide in the autumn whether or not to lift one of the last remaining mad cow disease control measures, the Over Thirty Months rule, Reuters reported. Lifting the restriction would pave the way for a resumption of full beef exports. The UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said it was studying recommendations made on Monday by the UK's Food Standards Agency which recommended relaxing the OTM rule. The agency said older cows could enter the food chain if they are tested and these tests are negative, a move which would bring the UK in line with the rest of the European Union. Other key controls - including the ban on meat-and-bone meal being fed to farm animals - should remain in place, the FSA said. The controls were put in place to protect people from contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, from which some 141 Britons are thought to have died. "Ministers will study the recommendations the FSA put forward and will make a decision in due course," a DEFRA spokesman told Reuters, adding it was likely to be in the autumn. --mor 1421 Local Time 1121 GMT
