The U.S.-EU Beef Hormone Dispute
The long-standing conflict with the United States over the European Union's ban on the use of growth hormones in beef cattle is back on the table. Two decades ago, the US and EU clashed over the health impacts of using hormones to speed up the growth of cattle, before both sides agreeing on a fragile compromise to end the trade fight.
The U.S.-EU Beef Hormone Dispute. Congressional Research Service. Summary . The United States and the European Union (EU) have. The hormones banned by the EU in cattle farming were the US and Canada beef producers on the one hand, who.
EUobserver's coverage of the European election. Watch our founder Lisbeth Kirk explain the reasons in this 30 seconds video. The EU has prohibited the use of growth-promoting hormones in beef since because of concerns for human health. At the time, the US and EU decided to play nice by agreeing to a Memorandum of Understanding MOU , which started a special programme to import a set quantity of beef - not treated by hormones - into the EU.
With the MOU set to expire, the previous USTR, started a process late last year to determine a list of retaliatory tariffs to impose on the EU for the hormone ban, and launched a period of public consultation.
Their import costs would double if the US were to follow through with slapping tariffs on EU motorcycle producers. The US is clearly hoping that hitting other sectors will get the European Commission to cave in and allow the imports of hormone beef. The hormone beef case raises fundamental questions about the role of trade and the influence of industrial players. Who gets to choose what kind of food and farm system we want?
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Is it the big corporations and beef traders that sell these products, and the trade negotiators acting on their behalf? Or are democracies allowed to judge the risks and decide for themselves which farm systems they deem culturally, environmentally, or socially appropriate? This description is questionable at best, if not misleading. The US meat industry essentially negotiated a deal that would require beef cattle to be fed a minimum of 62 percent feed grains or concentrated feed. Canada also imposed sanctions. In a subsequent development, the EU threatened to ban imports of US hormone-free beef after as part of a comprehensive risk- assessment study into hormone-treated beef EU scientists in April announced that they had found traces of hormones in percent of beef samples from US slaughterhouses - samples that were supposed to be hormone- free.
The US last year then implemented a voluntary ban on hormone-free beef while it reviewed monitoring measures. An EU veterinary committee this month announced it had accepted measures announced by the US for improving its monitoring programme to test for unauthorised substances and residue levels exceeding the maximum EU residue limits for authorised medicinal veterinary products in fresh meat and meat products. The EU has repeated its vow that it will not lift its ban on hormone-treated beef until its comprehensive risk assessments are complete no completion date is yet certain but instead would like to pursue the route of compensation - an alternative allowed under WTO rules.
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This would likely include expanding access for US hormone-free beef. In related news, a European Commission EC plan for an independent food safety agency that would keep the power to create and enforce legislation on food safety with the respective EU member states received strong support from EU governments on 16 March.
Until , the use of growth hormones, both endogenous and exogenous, was completely prohibited in as noted above Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Greece. Germany, the largest beef producer in the EU at the time, prohibited just the use of exogenous growth hormones. The five other member countries, including the second and third largest beef producers, France and the United Kingdom, permitted their use.
Time to beef up EU trade rules
The use of growth hormones was particularly common in the U. This had resulted in several disputes amongst member countries, with the countries that had no prohibitions arguing that the restrictions by the others acted as non-tariff trade barriers. But in response to the public outcry in , in combination with the contemporary discovery that DES was a teratogen , the EU began to issue regulations, beginning with a directive prohibiting the use of stilbenes and thyrostatics issued by the European Community Council of Agriculture Ministers in , and the commissioning of a scientific study into the use of estradiol, testosterone, progesterone, trenbolone, and zeranol in The European Consumers' Organisation BEUC lobbied for a total ban upon growth hormones, opposed, with only partial success, by the pharmaceutical industry, which was not well organized at the time.
Neither European farmers nor the meat processing industry took any stance on the matter.
With the help of the BEUC consumer boycotts of veal products, sparked in Italy by reports about DES in Italian magazines and in France and Germany by similar reports, spread from those three countries across the whole of the EU, causing companies such as Hipp and Alete to withdraw their lines of veal products, and veal prices to drop significantly in France, Belgium, West Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The imposition of a general ban was encouraged by the European Parliament, with a resolution passing by a majority of The Council of Ministers was divided along lines that directly matched each country's domestic stance on growth hormone regulation, with France, Ireland, the U.
The European Commission , leery of a veto by the Council and tightly linked to both pharmaceutical and via Directorate VI agricultural interests, presented factual arguments and emphasized the problem of trade barriers.
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Section of this report says:. The absence of such risk assessment, when considered in conjunction with the conclusion actually reached by most, if not all, of the scientific studies relating to the other aspects of risk noted earlier, leads us to the conclusion that no risk assessment that reasonably supports or warrants the import prohibition embodied in the EC Directives was furnished to the Panel.
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We affirm, therefore, the ultimate conclusions of the Panel that the EC import prohibition is not based on a risk assessment within the meaning of Articles 5. The EC made the scientific claim that the hormones used in treating cattle remain in the tissue, specifically the hormone, beta estradiol. The EC has also found high amounts of hormones in areas where there are dense cattle lots. This increase in hormones in the water has affected waterways and nearby wild fish.
Live exports up 33pc as EU markets drive demand. What Descriptive information to help identify this report. This article is published under. The European Consumers' Organisation BEUC lobbied for a total ban upon growth hormones, opposed, with only partial success, by the pharmaceutical industry, which was not well organized at the time. About Browse this Partner. To make the EU's agricultural system fairer and more environmentally friendly, there has to be a radical rethink of current practices. Request for Consultations received:.
The EU often applies the precautionary principle very stringently in regards to food safety. A more sophisticated risk assessment found there to be insufficient risk to ban certain hormones, but continued to ban others. This agreement allows members to use scientifically based measures to protect public health. Most specifically the Equivalence provision in Article 4 which states the following: