(Recasts after European Parliament hearing)

By Darren Ennis

BRUSSELS, July 16 (Reuters) - The European Union's health chief clashed with EU lawmakers and leading farming bodies on Monday in an escalation of a row over the safety of Brazilian meat imports into the bloc.

EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou dismissed allegations that Brazilian meat was unsafe to eat, describing charges made by EU farm bodies and lawmakers as misleading and incorrect.

But later on Monday, during a heated discussion, most of the European Parliament's agriculture committee backed calls from Europe's farm bodies, most notably in Britain and Ireland, for a ban on meat imports from the world's biggest beef exporter.

"The European Parliament calls on the Commission to ban Brazilian beef imports until such time as concerns about food safety standards are addressed," a non-binding resolution said.

MEPs were responding after a heated discussion in which Irish and British farmers claimed in a report that Brazilian ranchers did not meet the kind of standards required for EU farmers.

But in a letter sent to EU farm chief Mariann Fischer Boel, farming organisations and members of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, Kyprianou refuted the claims.

"Overall, we feel that the allegations are to a large extent based on incorrect interpretation of EU requirements for beef imports," Kyprianou said in the letter obtained by Reuters.

"This information is not new and is misleading."

But the letter reiterated Kyprianou's warning earlier this month that Brazil faces a total ban on its meat exports into the EU if it fails to address outstanding food safety concerns by the end of the year.

A ban on imports of beef from three Brazilian provinces has been in place since 2005 following an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The EU executive said it will consider a wider ban if Brazil fails to meet its obligations.

"This is an outrage. If EU farmers acted like Brazilian farmers, they would be put in jail and their cattle dumped," Scottish Nationalist Party MEP Alyn Smith told the EU assembly committee.

Brazilian beef exports to the EU have increased by 20 percent since 2003 and accounted for 66 percent of imports into the bloc last year, despite an import tariff of 176 percent.

Some EU diplomats and Commission officials say farming bodies, fearing they will be big losers if global trade talks finally succeed, are using the issue of food safety as a protectionist measure.

Irish farmers have long been protected by high import tariffs, as well as EU subsidies, and they say a deal at the World Trade Organisation could cost them 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) a year in lost exports.

"There is a trade threat. How can EU farmers be competitive against products which cost less, but are not of the same standards," Irish Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan said following a bilateral meeting with Kyprianou in Brussels.

The IFA report accuses Brazilian beef farmers of failing to employ proper tagging and identification systems which can be used to trace shipments in the case of disease outbreaks.

It also alleged that Brazilian farmers used illegal growth hormones and medicines, have inadequate disease controls and wreak environmental damage.

"The Commission's food and veterinary office (FVO) ... was broadly satisfied with the controls of the Brazilian authorities. Consequently, many of the conclusions in the IFA report are not valid," the letter said.

But IFA president Padraig Walshe accused Kyprianou of "an attempted cover-up" and said the health chief was focused on undermining the IFA report rather than addressing the problem.

"Commissioner Kyprianou has spent more time defending the indefensible. He must come out of denial on the risk posed by Brazilian beef," Walshe told Reuters.

AlertNet news is provided by