A sigh of relief was heard all round when, on 13 May, the EU and US signed an agreement temporarily resolving their long-standing dispute over the EU ban on using growth hormones in beef. But despite the celebrations, the US has not given up on wanting to eventually place hormone-treated US beef on EU markets, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk has made clear. “The EU remains one of the few markets to ban beef from cattle given growth-promoting hormones – beef that is perfectly safe to eat,” Kirk complained recently. Brazil, Norway and Iceland also ban imports of hormone-treated beef.

To recall, the accord offers US beef exporters new opportunities to expand into European markets. The EU will open a new tariff line, on 3 August 2009, allowing 20,000 tonnes of US high quality beef (hormone free) to be imported to the EU duty free per annum for 2009, 2010 and 2011. An existing quota of 11,500 metric tonnes subject to a 20% import tariff stays, with the new duty-free line added to it, meaning the high quality beef quota will rise from 11,500 to 31,500 tonnes from 2009. The 20,000-tonne duty free quote will rise to 45,000 tonnes in 2012, giving a grand total of 56,500 tonnes of high quality beef. In return, the US agreed to suspend plans, announced in January 2009, to impose retaliatory duties on a wide range of food products the EU exports to the US. The accord will be reviewed in 2012.

The EU food industry welcomed the deal because it foresees an eventual end to the retaliatory duties that “have had severe consequences for many EU food producers,” according to the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA). Describing the outcome as “acceptable,” the CIAA said it “had been alarmed at the prospect of the US rotating the list of products subject to retaliation”. But it also stressed how “the new agreement leaves the issue of the legitimacy of the EU ban unsettled, which means that further US claims cannot be excluded”.

US trade officials similarly view the deal as a pragmatic package that buys the two sides time to come up with a long-term solution. They say that the issue has been unfairly politicised by certain EU member states. “When you base yourself on science, you can agree, but if you allow the politicians to take over, you have a problem,” said one official, noting France, Austria and Germany had “a bad track record,” while the United Kingdom was “more careful”. But an EU official countered that “the science is not clear cut the way it is for something like salmonella poisoning where the risk to human health is obvious. With hormones you are trying to assess long-term effects and this is harder to do.”

Meanwhile, US beef is getting onto the European market in small but rising quantities. Exports to the EU27 in 2008 (all hormone-free, of course) amounted to 20,926 metric tonnes, worth US$100 million, a rise of 52% in volume and 105% in value over 2007, according to the US Meat Export Federation. Of this, 4,938 metric tonnes was part of the ‘high quality beef quota’ the EU has reserved for US exporters. High quality beef means muscle cuts generally sold as a main course in shops or supermarkets. There is no restriction on the amount of lower grade beef the US can export to the EU, apart from it needing to be hormone free.

LITTLE ROOM FOR COMPROMISE

Washington is unlikely to give ground on this issue. Having insisted for 15 years hormone-treated meat was perfectly safe to eat, were it to deviate from this stance even slightly, it would leave itself open to a slew of lawsuits from consumers – for example from cancer patients claiming their illness was caused by the hormones. Naturally, US beef exporters are pressuring it not to budge. “The WTO has found there is no evidence of damage to human health from hormone-treated meat,” said John Brooks from the US Meat Export Federation. “It has been fed to people in the US for several decades with no ill effects.” Brooks said the hormones allow the beef to be sold cheaper by reducing the amount of feed animals need to be able to convert energy to muscle tissue. US beef is also cheaper because the cattle are fed on genetically modified (GM) feed, which is less expensive than non-GM feed, Brooks added.

But the EU ban is equally unlikely to go away soon as European farmers and consumers continue to view hormone-treated meat negatively. Interestingly, the issue of pathogen reduction treatments, which has caused the EU to ban US poultry (see separate article) could affect beef too as the US cattle industry uses substances, acetic and lactic acid, to kill bacteria that are not authorised in the EU. The treatments are supposed to prevent an outbreak of e coli, bacteria that live in the stomachs of some cattle that can get into the food chain when the animal’s internal organs are removed. The May 2009 agreement only requires the EU to raise the US quota in 2012 if the EU approves these treatments.

Hormone ban - history

The EU ban on hormone-treated beef took effect on 1 January 1990. The US filed a case in the World Trade Organisation protesting the ban in 1996, which it won, leading the WTO in 1998 to authorise the US to impose retaliatory duties on EU food imports worth up to US$116.8 million a year, which the US did on a wide range of products. In 2003, the EU adopted a directive banning one hormone, claiming it caused cancer, and five others under the precautionary principle. In early 2009, the EU was preparing to return to the WTO with new evidence justifying the ban when Washington announced it was amending the list of EU imports subject to retaliatory duties, notably tripling the duty on Roquefort cheese from 100% to 300%. This move triggered talks for the interim agreement signed in May 2009.

The biggest EU producers of beef today are France, Germany and the UK and the biggest importers of US beef are Italy and Germany. EU beef consumption reached 8.3 million tonnes in 2008, whereas EU imports of beef were just 300,000 tonnes or 3.6% of total consumption. The imports came mainly from Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.