AN EU US trade dispute over the safety of American chickens may jeopardise some £3.8 million in annual bacon and pork exports to the US. The US has threatened to retaliate against EU food exports following the Union's unwillingness to accept hygiene standards in US poultry slaughter houses.
Until yesterday US food exports to the EU had to be cleared by veterinary certification for each importing member state according to its own standards.
Now an EU standard certification procedure applies, and the Union has indicated, following the inspection of five US slaughter houses in February, that it cannot accept "veterinary equivalence" for poultry. The result is that US chickens are effectively banned from the EU from today.
The EU and US have been trying to reach a food equivalence agreement, as required under World Trade Organisation rules, for three years and seem close in all areas other than poultry.
The problem stems from fundamentally different approaches to poultry hygiene. The EU requires high standards of cleanliness at all stages of production, while the US simply requires birds to be dipped in a chloride solution at the end of the process has left the EU with little room to manoeuvre, as meat hygiene is a politically sensitive issue and the Council of Ministers is most unlikely to relax its standards. For the US, the loss of poultry exports to the EU of $50 million a year might appear trivial if it were not, however, likely to trigger similar demands in Russia, a market worth $2 billion last year.
Some $300 million of EU red meat exports to the US (over 80 per cent of it Danish bacon) is likely to be affected by the retaliatory measures.
A representative of the EU in Washington, Ms Ella Krucoff, called the US measures "disproportionate" and "illegal as far as the rules of world trade are concerned".
Kevin O'Sullivan, Environ mental and Food Science Correspondent, adds:
If the US introduces retaliatory trade measures against Irish farm products, it could threaten over, £15 million of Irish exports, according to the Irish Farmers Association. This takes into account dairy exports and meat, products - including poultry and "miscellaneous edibles" - which alone account for £7 million in annual exports to the US.
"Irish and European producers are required to meet some of the most stringent, if not the most stringent, standards of food production in the world. It would be only right that the same standards, would apply to imported produce an IFA spokesman said.
Having such standards in place meant higher costs for EU producers, who increasingly have had to match standards set by the EU rather than individual member states, particularly if their agriculture is heavily dependent on exports (as in Ireland's case). "The US must be able to match EU standards in our view. It is a reasonable requirement," he added.
