The British Meat and Livestock Commission is launching a worldwide campaign to put British beef back on other people's plates.

European Union farm ministers voted on Monday to lift the UK beef export ban, which has been in place for two-and-a-half years and has cost an estimated �4bn.

Now EU inspectors must carry out final checks of the UK's anti-BSE measures before meat can be sent abroad.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler told the BBC he expected the trade to resume in March 1999.

The Meat and Livestock Commission is now ready to distribute tens of thousands of promotional leaflets.

The leaflet, entitled British Beef Returns, details the huge changes the industry has gone through in an attempt to satisfy European preconditions for re-entering the export market.

The A4-sized leaflet is available in all major European languages. It explains how the lifting of the ban will work and assures customers that no beef will be exported from Britain until full inspections are carried out by European officials.

Les Armstrong, from the National Farmers' Union, said the future looked more certain for British beef farmers.

"It is progress, they have accepted that what we have done is right, that it has made British beef the safest and they are prepared to move on from there."

Meat and Livestock Commission Marketing Director Gwynne Howells said lost ground had to be regained and foreign consumers had to be convinced that UK-reared beef was safe.

"The confidence of consumers and of the industry in those countries will need to be built step by step.

"And the approach in different countries may well be different. We'll have a different approach to Germany, for example, than we would to Spain," Mr Howells said.

The worldwide export ban was imposed in March 1996, in response to the announcement of a suspected link between BSE in cattle and the human equivalent of the disease, CJD.

Since the block was introduced, British farmers have lost an export market worth an annual �650m. Some of them have gone out of business.