U.S. Beef Trade Update

South Korea: Discussions with South Korean officials about reopening the market to U.S. beef have been very positive. While there were hopes that a late November meeting would have resulted in the lifting of the ban against U.S. beef, a decision on the issue was postponed until a meeting to be held around mid-December.

European Union: U.S. and European Union (EU) lawyers Sept. 12-15 debated the EU beef hormone ban on U.S. beef during the public proceedings of a Dispute Settlement Panel at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. The EU announced it was filing a new beef-hormone WTO case against the United States and Canada in November 2004, and the request was granted at the Feb. 17, 2005, meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body. The suit claims the EU is in compliance with WTO rulings on the beef hormone case, and therefore, the U.S. and Canada should remove retaliation measures.

The panel was asked to rule on the EU’s complaint against U.S. sanctions on certain EU agricultural imports resulting from the EU’s ban on U.S. beef. The WTO already found the current EU ban on U.S. hormone-treated beef to be an illegal trade barrier, in violation of international trade rules and not based on sound science. A ruling on the arguments heard in mid-September may take as long as nine months.

They are now adding a “scientific experts panel” to the WTO case, which is a win for the U.S. The addition of this panel would indicate that the EU’s effort to say that the U.S. was not in compliance on procedural issues has been trumped by concern that the EU has no new scientific justification to make this claim. Therefore there is no procedural issue as the EU claims.  This also gives the U.S. Trade Representative more time to complete the current negotiations on the hormone ban.