Washington - The United States proposed labeling beef exports to the European Union in an effort to end a decade-old EU ban and defuse a potentially explosive trade dispute over hormone-treated.
Peter Scher, U.S. Trade Representative special negotiator for agriculture trade, said the proposal marks the first time Washington has been willing to accept the idea of a mandatory country-of-origin label for U.S. beef exports to Europe.
“It would clearly indicate that it was produced in the United States and to the extent that European consumers had concerns about U.S.-produced beef then they would have the option of buying it or not buying it,” he said.
The labels would say the beef was approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) but would not specifically indicate the beef had been treated with hormones, Scher said.
It is uncertain whether the U.S. labeling proposal would be accepted in Europe, where food safety issues are sensitive, particularly after the crisis involving “mad cow” disease.
The EU has banned imports of U.S. beef since 1989 because of the use of artificial-growth hormones, which make cattle grow bigger and faster. It is a common U.S. industry practice that has been approved by federal government regulators.
The United States challenged the EU ban at the World Trade Organization and won a favorable ruling. But Washington and Brussels disagreed over what that ruling meant. The United States said the EU must now drop its ban while the EU interpreted the WTO ruling as meaning it must conduct new risk-assessment studies to support the ban.
They appeared headed for a potentially damaging clash over beef hormones at the same time a similar battle over the EU's new banana import system is in arbitration at the WTO.
The beef case is also a political minefield for U.S. officials who fear an erosion of support for free trade among American farmers. U.S. cattle producers say they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales to Europe because of the ban.
The EU faces a May 13 deadline to comply with the WTO ruling on its hormone treated beef import ban. But EU officials said last week health-risk studies would not be completed in time and circulated an options paper among member governments that included labeling, making the import ban temporary or compensating the United States for lost sales due to the ban.
Scher said the United States saw the labeling proposal as a “positive movement” on the part of the EU. “We are hoping to avoid another situation like the banana situation and to be able to engage the European Union fairly quickly in negotiations,” he said.
The United States is awaiting a response to the labeling proposal, which was made in a letter last week from U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to European Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan and Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler.
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