Since 1996, US chickens cannot be sold in the EU because of a European ban on the anti-salmonella treatments the US industry uses on poultry products, which involve dipping carcasses in baths of chlorine or similar solutions to disinfect them. The EU says this method is too radical and not necessary if, throughout the production chain, bacteria are not allowed develop. “We feel the treatment opens the door to becoming sloppy during production,” said one EU official. “We want to prevent contamination occurring. We monitor salmonella levels on poultry farms. If the farm tests positive, you cannot sell fresh or frozen whole poultry from there – only processed products such as chicken nuggets.” In addition, since 2004 an EU regulation (835/EC) requires meat products to be washed using potable water.

Long an issue simmering below the radar, the US administration upped the ante in 2007 by placing it on the agenda of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), the intergovernmental body set up in April 2007 to remove regulatory-related trade obstacles. The European Commission responded by tabling a compromise, in June 2008, which removed the ban on condition that US producers only used one of the four pathogen reduction treatments (PRTs) at a time, washed the poultry in potable water afterward and labelled the product as having undergone the PRTs. In addition, the waste water discharged from US processing plants had to conform to EU environmental requirements.

COMMISSION COMPROMISE REJECTED

Alas, the compromise failed to satisfy either side. “We found serious shortcomings with it,” said one US trade official. The US felt the proposed labelling wording – ‘decontaminated by chemicals’ or ‘treated with antimicrobial substances’ - amounted to a health warning that would deter EU consumers from buying the product. EU agriculture ministers roundly rejected it too, in December 2008, in a 26-0 vote, in which the United Kingdom abstained. The US administration, in January 2009, decided to file a complaint to the World Trade Organisation. Informal consultations have not gone well and Washington is likely to request that a formal dispute resolution panel be established.

According to Richard Loeb from the National Chicken Council, a lobby for the US poultry industry, Europe’s history of blocking US poultry stretches back to the 1950s. Loeb said the EU originally did this by imposing quotas and tariffs but that when the WTO banned this in the 1990s, it started using food safety measures. France has been an especially strong opponent even though French poultry companies use hyper-chlorination on exports to Middle Eastern countries and used to treat domestic market poultry with chlorine too, Loeb said. EU enlargement has also hurt US chicken exporters. “We used to have a market in Poland but no more since it joined the EU and had to harmonise with the EU requirements.”

The US industry puts its potential export market in Europe at US$200-300 million, with the gap left by the ban filled mainly by Brazil. The largest European producer is France, while Germany, the UK, Poland and Hungary are also significant producers. US poultry exporters have, meanwhile, set their sights on other markets, in particular China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Loeb said that though chlorination was not legally required in the US, there was no alternative for controlling salmonella. One EU official admitted that reported incidents of poultry-related salmonella poisoning are higher in Europe than in the US, but added that this might also be because the level of reporting is higher in Europe. In any case, both sides agree salmonella contamination from poultry is a real problem.

SALMONELLA A REAL PROBLEM

According to one EU source said, “if we are serious about meeting our salmonella targets, we will need to use every means possible: prevention and decontamination.”

Bill Roenigk, vice-president of the US National Chicken Council, said “the EU says we use chlorination as a crutch to cover up our poor manufacturing practices but we do not agree with this. We need the treatment as an extra insurance”. Roenigk said around 20% of chickens on supermarket shelves in the EU and the US have salmonella on them but that these bacteria typically get killed when the consumer cooks the meat. He slammed the EU for initially justifying the ban on grounds that the PRT substances were carcinogenic, and then changing the justification by arguing that the PRTs hurt the environment by creating pathogen-resistant bacteria when the waste products are released into the water supply.

Pathogen reduction treatments

The US poultry industry uses four different compounds, sometimes in combination, to kill bacteria in chickens: chlorine dioxide, acidified sodium chlorite, trisodium phosphate and peroxyacids. Poultry are dipped in cool water (four degrees Celsius) that contains one of these compounds, which is supposed to keep the product pathogen free for 10-14 days.