991020 U.S. Denies EU Charges of Improper Hormone UseOctober 5, 1999Washington - In its most detailed rebuttal yet, the United States has denied European Union charges that U.S. ranchers use “black market” hormones on their cattle to boost beef production or administer legal cattle growth hormones in an unsafe manner. In a pair of letters hand-delivered to European Union Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, the United States also urged the EU to tone down its rhetoric in the decade-old beef trade dispute. The trade fight reached a crescendo this summer when the United States and Canada received permission from the World Trade Organization to impose 100% duties on nearly $125 million of EU goods. The WTO gave its OK after the EU missed a May 13 deadline to drop the ban and bring its regulations on the beef hormone issue in line with WTO rules. Instead the EU issued a preliminary “risk assessment,” which concluded that one of the six hormones used by cattle producers could cause cancer if used improperly. Fischler and Glickman met in Montreal on Friday, as part of the “Quint” meeting of agricultural ministers from the EU, United States, Japan, Canada and Australia. That meeting focused primarily on a new round of world trade negotiations that will begin in Seattle in late November. But Glickman took the opportunity to deliver the two letters -- one signed by himself and the other by Tom Billy, head of the U.S. Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Stephen Sundlof, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine. An earlier letter written by FDA Commissioner Jane Henney focused on the safety of the six growth promotants if properly handling procedures are followed. The latest letters addressed the charges the drugs are sometimes misused and that illegal growth hormones are also administered. “This is an issue that has been well documented as an EU problem, not a U.S. problem,” Glickman said on the second point. “When producers have access to safe and effective drugs for growth promotion and feed efficiency, there is little incentive to use black market drugs.” Glickman backed up his claim by noting a recent EU review of U.S. beef shipped to the EU under a quota for “hormone-free” imports “did not find any use of unapproved hormones in the United States.” In the second letter, Billy and Sundlof said much of the evidence the EU presented in its preliminary report about the misuse of approved hormones was either old and anecdotal in nature or “based on hypothetical scenarios that venture well beyond a rational 'worst case.”' A 1989 incident in which a Michigan feedlot operator purportedly “treated his animals with multiple implants every two weeks until five days prior to slaughter would defy rational human behavior, if true,” the agency heads said. Growth hormones, which are implanted in the ear of cattle, work best when “used according to label directions,” Billy and Sundlof said. A feedlot operator would lose money if he implanted hormones every two weeks because of the stress and the likely adverse reaction that would have on the animals, they said. The agency chiefs also expressed surprise that “anyone would select Michigan to investigate how implants are used in the cattle industry.” Texas, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas account for more than 80% of the hormone implants used in cattle in the United States, they noted. The EU has said it would maintain its ban at least until it completes final studies on the safety on the hormones, which have been approved for use in the United States for decades. That final report is now expected in mid-2000, instead of by the end of this year, as the EU originally said. “We anticipate that these peer-reviewed studies will reinforce the international consensus that has found the proper use of these hormones to be safe,” Glickman said. He also urged the EU to lower its rhetoric, noting that the inflammatory tone of the preliminary report “was not helpful.”
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