Former chief vet warns EU talks could threaten animal import ban

Reopening talks with the European Union could make it difficult for Iceland to maintain its ban on importing live animals, former chief veterinary officer Halldór Runólfsson told mbl.is. He said Iceland’s previous experience of EU accession negotiations offers little reason to believe that securing a continued exemption would be easy.

Runólfsson took part in Iceland’s accession negotiations with the EU during the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. He said EU representatives were far less accommodating of Iceland’s special circumstances than many people realised.

“What still sticks with me, after all these years, is a sentence that was thrown at me when we were explaining Iceland’s special circumstances: ‘We don’t want bloody New Zealand or Australia in Europe,’” Runólfsson said. “That was the attitude we encountered.”

The comment was made as Iceland’s delegation stressed that the country was an island with a unique disease status, like Australia and New Zealand, which have established strict safeguards against animal imports.

“We were trying to get people to understand that our position was completely different from that of mainland European countries. But there was not much support for those arguments,” Runólfsson said.

Britain and Ireland showed the most understanding

Runólfsson said the only representatives who genuinely understood Iceland’s position were the British and Irish.

“They are island countries themselves and understood much better why we placed such emphasis on controlling imports of live animals. But the British have since left the European Union, so I do not expect there to be greater understanding now if negotiations begin again,” he said.

He said it was therefore misleading to claim that Iceland could easily secure a permanent exemption from EU rules on importing live animals.

“What concerns me is that people seem to talk about this as if maintaining the current ban would be no problem. My experience from the negotiations was quite the opposite: this was one of the most difficult issues,” Runólfsson said.

During preparations for the accession negotiations, Preben Willeberg, Denmark’s former chief veterinary officer, was asked to assess the risks associated with allowing free imports of live animals.

“His work immediately showed that if imports were opened, diseases that would be very harmful to cattle would probably reach Iceland,” Runólfsson said.

He noted that dairy production is the backbone of Icelandic livestock farming and the sector that generates at least some profit. Significant financial interests are therefore at stake, he said.

Daði Már Kristófersson, who is now finance minister, previously calculated the potential damage from one such disease, bovine paratuberculosis, based on Willeberg’s assessment. According to Runólfsson, the loss could amount to tens of millions each year.

“This is a real risk that must be taken seriously,” he said. In his view, the Icelandic government must therefore make continued safeguards against animal imports a non negotiable objective in any future negotiations.