Farmers go to court over mad cow crisis

More than 600 farmers from all over Spain, including the Balearics, will go to court seeking 3'234 million pesetas from the European Commission and Council for losses sustained in the first six months of the mad cow crisis. A spokesman for the farmers' union said that the purpose of going to court was to show that the European Commission had taken insufficient action over the export of contaminated animal feed from Great Britain. The court case will be heard tomorrow in Luxembourg. The farmers' lawyer, Miquel Roca, said that the case was based on a European Parliament report which concluded that the Commission and the Council were responsible for the crisis because they took action too late, it was insufficient and unco-ordinated and adopted contradictory decisions. Farmers from other European Union countries have not gone to court, Roca said, because they received compensation through other channels.