March 23, 2001 / Inside US Trade / Vol. 19, No. 12
European Union officials late last week criticized a temporary U.S. ban on EU meat exports enacted in response to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom and a region in France, saying the blanket ban against all EU products went beyond a bilateral veterinary agreement that calls for regional outbreak of diseases to be met with import restrictions targeting those regions.
Similarly, at the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Committee last week, the EU criticized countries for not using the regional approach in their restrictions imposed following the outbreak. Under Article 6 of the SPS agreement, WTO members are called on to tailor their SPS restrictions to the regions affected by pests or diseases.
In addition to the U.S., around 20 countries have enacted restrictions on EU food exports since the outbreak of the highly contagious disease.
In a March 16 press briefing, EU officials in Washington held out hope that the U.S. would scale back its ban to deal only with products from the affected areas, and said they had "positive soundings" on this from U.S. officials, though no firm commitment. They downplayed earlier remarks by EU Health Commissioner David Byrne that the EU would make full use "of our bilateral contacts and our WTO trade arrangements to have these restrictions lifted."
"We don't believe [WTO action] is going to be necessary," the official said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently waiting to see if the disease has spread in the EU before determining whether to scale back the ban in a way that would affect just products from the region, according to a USDA official.
"Probably failing any more outbreaks in the continental EU, we're probably not that far away from declaring an end to the [blanket] ban," a USDA spokesman said earlier this week. That determination is at least a week and a half away, the official said, but added that USDA was very encouraged by the proactive steps taken by EU countries.
But that timeline is likely now in doubt since the discovery of an outbreak of the disease in the Netherlands on March 21.
The March 13 U.S. ban on EU cows, sheep, and swine and fresh and chilled meat of these animals will primarily affect EU exports of pig meat valued at approximately $400 million annually, the official said. Most EU beef and sheep exports are already banned out of concern about mad-cow disease. Additional dairy and processed meat products are subject to restrictions.
The blanket ban on EU products runs counter to a 1999 veterinary accord between the U.S. and EU, the EU officials said. In that accord, a U.S. determination of a region's animal health status as well as its acceptance of a country's proposed measures to control future animal disease outbreaks is the basis of authorizing EU meat exports to the U.S. market (Inside U.S. Trade, July 23, 1999).
The U.S. should accept as adequate the measures the EU has taken since the outbreak of the disease, which involve restricting the movement of animals from the affected regions and destruction of potentially infected stock. These measures should prevent spread of the diseases to other EU regions, the officials said, though they acknowledged that could not be a 100 percent guaranteed. They said they hoped if the disease has not been found in other parts of the EU in the coming days, the U.S. would scale back its ban just to just cover the affected regions. The officials did not expect such action within the next two weeks.
As a positive sign, they pointed to contact between Byrne and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman last week. Byrne said he was "reassured by the Secretary that these measures will be reviewed urgently."
"We have agreed that our respective veterinary services should cooperate urgently on finding solutions," Byrne said. "We closed with a commitment to remain in close contact until a solution is found."
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