Meat disputes hold up TTIP deal
Entrenched attitudes concerning a risk- or science-based approach to meat trade mean it is unlikely a deal will be sealed in 2016, with the EU backing a risk-based relationship and the US preferring a science-based system.
“There are agricultural sectors, such as meats, where the EU maintains a competitiveness gap vis-à-vis US producers,” said a trade spokesman for the European Commission directorate general, following the latest round of negotiations on 11-15 July. “Against this backdrop, the EU is pursuing in TTIP alternative approaches to full liberalisation for EU import-sensitive products, such as meat, for which market access may be granted through carefully crafted import quotas.”
The assistant to the US Trade Representative, Dan Mullaney, said that the US had agreed to eliminate duties on 97% of tariff lines, with agricultural products making up most of the remaining contentious 3%. “We have yet to find the balance within the agricultural silo between tariff orders and some of the other important issues such as on geographical indications,” agreed the EC’s chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero.
Removal of trade barriers
The importance of tariffs was stressed by Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of EU farm body Coga-Cogeca, and the US’s National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s director of international trade, Kent Bacus. “Three-quarters of possible gains from a potential deal could come from removing red tape and non-tariff barriers to trade,” Pesonen said. Bacus went further, demanding “the elimination of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers”.
Meanwhile Pesonen regretted the lack of EU/US meat trade. “EU beef has been effectively embargoed by the US, justified by their safety concerns mainly on BSE. Quite recently, the US opened its imports to Ireland, the Netherlands and Lithuania, but only at national level.
“We export some pigmeat and poultry to the US, but only a fraction of our potential. We do not import major volumes of pigmeat and poultry from the US,” Pesonen continued. “Live animals trade is basically non-existent, mainly for sanitary reasons.” He welcomed a 5.7% rise in EU agricultural exports in 2015, reaching €129bn. But even if, as he said, “the US is the first client for our EU agri-food exports worth €19bn,” recent Commission statistics reveal meat products only comprise 2.1% of 2015 agri-food exports to and imports from the US.
Hormone row
Pesonen maintained the success of the TTIP negotiations will depend on the EU’s ability to defend “our high standards in all aspects of agricultural production, despite sometimes dramatic cost implications”. But Bacus disagreed, voicing a popular US meat industry line: “The main obstacles to agreement are the protectionist European agriculture interests who do not want the US to have market-driven and science-based access to European consumers,” he argued.
“The US embraces science and technology in food production because it helps us produce beef more economically and sustainably. Meanwhile, the EU has non-science-based restrictions on US beef and is unwilling to seek meaningful results from negotiations,” he said pointing to how “the EU only allows beef from non-hormone treated cattle”.
“As this is a very small segment of US beef production, only a handful of producers benefit from trade with Europe,” he said. “In 2015, the US sold 24,300 tonnes of beef to European consumers at a total $305m in sales.”
