Hormone-free beef: EU-US imports agreement confirmed, ending decades-long WTO dispute

15 Jul 2019 --- The EU and the US are poised to sign a deal reviewing the functionality of an existing trade arrangement ensuring an autonomous tariff quota (TRQ) for imports of high-quality beef into the EU. This ends a long-standing World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute and ensures US farmers are guaranteed a bigger part of the hormone-free quota, as well as helping to defuse transatlantic trade tensions.

The European Council has today adopted a decision on the US share in the TRQ for hormone-free beef. This follows a previous announcement from Brussels that it had brokered a deal with the US that conclusively ends a row over restrictions on beef imports into the European market which dates back to 1989. 

The agreement will be signed in Brussels at the earliest possible date, according to the European Council. 

Back in 2009, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provided an interim solution to a longstanding WTO dispute regarding the imports of US beef treated with certain growth-promoting hormones. Under the agreement, a 45,000 tons quota of non-hormone treated beef was opened by the EU to qualifying suppliers. The quota also had to be made available to non-US suppliers, under WTO rules.

Thanks to the new agreement, the existing quota will remain unchanged but 35,000 out of the total 45,000-ton TRQ will be ring-fenced for the US and phased in over a period of seven years. 

The TRQ will continue to cover only products complying with EU’s high food safety and health standards, stresses the Council. 

This step is key to resolving a long-standing dispute between the EU and the US on measures imposed by the EU in the late eighties when the so-called “beef war” first began. “The beef hormone dispute” started when the EU banned the importation of meat that contained artificial beef growth hormones approved for use and administered in the US.

Originally, the ban covered six such hormones but was amended in 2003 to permanently ban one hormone – estradiol-17β – while provisionally banning the use of the five others. WTO rules permit such bans, but only where a signatory presents valid scientific evidence that the ban is a health and safety measure. Canada and the US opposed this ban, taking the EU to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. In 1997, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled against the EU.

Last October, the Council authorized the European Commission to open negotiations between the EU and the US on the operation of the TRQ, including on the country-allocation of the quota.

Negotiations with the US were concluded earlier this year and, in light of that agreement, the Commission then sought and obtained the accord of the other substantial supplying countries, in line with the applicable WTO rules.

The agreement also underlines the EU’s commitment to “a positive transatlantic trade agenda,” says the Council.

By Gaynor Selby