No quick end to EU-US poultry row - Germany

BERLIN, April 23 (Reuters) - The European Union's industry chief is unlikely to get the bloc's backing any time soon to settle a dispute with the United States over poultry imports, a senior German government official said on Wednesday.

The EU banned imports of U.S. poultry treated with antimicrobial agents in 1997 and the issue has been an irritant in trade ties.

EU Enterprise and Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen has been pressing for a deal to end the dispute in time for a meeting in June of top-level EU and U.S. officials to discuss ways of boosting the world's biggest trade relationship.

"We understand Mr Verheugen's position but it will however require a big change in EU food hygiene legislation," said Gert Lindemann, Germany's deputy agriculture minister.

"We can't solve this problem overnight or in the next four weeks," he told a group of Brussels-based correspondents visiting Berlin.

Verheugen has said failure to resolve the issue could jeopardise attempts to reach consensus with Washington on other issues including healthcare, financial services, patents, cosmetics and biofuels.

In a letter to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso this year, Verheugen said the EU should consider allowing imports from the United States while not allowing the use of the antimicrobial treatment in EU production.

Farm ministers from around 20 EU countries, at a recent meeting, opposed dropping the ban but Germany was keeping its position open, Lindemann said.

The European Food Safety Authority has said it has no health concerns about the way the United States treats its poultry meat with low-concentration chlorine washes, but there are still some environmental issues to be looked into, he said.

There was also opposition from within the EU's executive Commission where Verheugen's colleagues in charge of environmental and agricultural issues were against an end to the import ban, Lindemann said. (Reporting by Paul Taylor in Berlin, writing by William Schomberg in Brussels; Editing by Robert Woodward)