Background
As part of the political debate around chlorine-washed poultry, 21 of 27 European Union Agricultural Ministers on May 19 announced opposition to the European Commission proposal currently being drafted. The proposal is to lift a European Union ban on treating poultry with antimicrobial agents. This restriction has kept nearly all US poultry out of the EU since 1997.
Given the strong opposition of agricultural ministers at this stage, it is increasingly unlikely that the proposal will be approved when it is formally submitted to the Council. However, EPHA believes the Commission will still formally submit the proposal, as pressure from the US administration to remove the ban will require a political demonstration that the Commission made a good faith effort to do so.
However, when the Commission unveils the draft proposal it could also raise objections in the United States (US), for three reasons.
The draft proposal requires poultry treated with anti-microbials to be rinsed with water.
It also requires clear labeling which poultry has been treated with antimicrobial agents.
These two provisions are opposed by the US poultry industry: rinsing increases production costs, while labeling may deter EU customers from buying US imports.
The draft proposal calls for a two-year transition period for removing the ban. That goes against comments made last week by Daniel Price, assistant to the US President for International Economic Affairs, who last week said the Commission proposal should result in a removal of the ban by the fall (Inside US Trade, May 16).
The US and EU announced at the high-level Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) meeting in Brussels that the EU would propose lifting the antimicrobial ban by June’s US-EU Summit. The US has made resolution of the poultry issue a key test of the viability of the TEC (Inside U.S. Trade, May 16).
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab has called it the "litmus test" for the effectiveness of the TEC, but this week Nikolaos Zaimis of the Delegation of the European Commission at a May 21 Global Business Dialogue event said he disagreed that any one issue should be the test of the TEC’s credibility.
The Commission hopes to bolster the TEC in order to tackle much larger trade issues, such as the 100 percent scanning requirement approved by the US Congress in the 2006 Safe Port Act last year and opposed by the EU and US importers.
The EU wants to involve members of the US Congress in the TEC in part because the Bush administration has told the EU that only a legislative change could alter the scanning requirement, due to be fully implemented in 2012.
Latest news
An EU committee of national food-safety experts meeting on 2 June voted overwhelmingly against lifting the poultry ban. No member state voted to end it; only one – the UK – abstained.
Under normal procedures, the proposal would be handed over to national agriculture ministers to discuss at their next meeting. But Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry Günter Verheugen, who pushed for the lifting of the ban has, according to a Commission official, blocked the procedure of sending the proposal to the EU farm ministers. Verheugen’s intervention means that the process of debate will now stretch out over the summer and into the early autumn. Commissioner for Health, Androulla Vassilou, stands firmly by the position that strict rules should apply in the case of import of poultry treated with clorine.
For more information
Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC)
EU states against end to US poultry ban, European Voice.
Plans to lift US poultry ban delayed, European Voice
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