EU Acts on Beef Ban

May 25, 2000

The European Commission has decided to propose a definitive ban on one growth-promoting cattle hormone but keep a provisional ban on five others. REUTERS reported from Brussels that the move is an effort to bring a new European Union law into line with world trade rules and end damaging U.S. sanctions. U.S. cattlemen called it a "creative attempt" to circumvent international trade rules.

"If we understand the announcement ... correctly, they have proposed that a permanent ban on U.S. beef in place since 1989 should become provisional for most products," the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said in a statement. "No one believes that in practice the Europeans see their ban as anything other than permanent. It already has been in place for 12 years."

The REUTERS article said the EU believes the new proposal will give the hormone ban a firm legal basis and provide the scientific justification which the World Trade Organization said was lacking. The commission was basing its proposal on a new scientific opinion that growth-promoting cattle hormones pose a cancer risk in humans.

After the WTO ruled against the hormone ban on imported beef, the United States won authorization to impose $117 million of sanctions on European products including Danish ham, French pate and Italian tomatoes in retaliation for the ban. Canada also imposed about $7.5 million in sanctions.

Commission officials, according to REUTERS, said the latest opinion, coupled with a formal EU decision should satisfy the WTO’s objections and force the United States to remove the retaliatory sanctions.

"The European Union is not in compliance with world trade rules, and their actions today do nothing to change that," said the NCBA. "A ban is a ban. To our knowledge, there is no new publicly available scientific evidence to warrant a modification to this international scientific consensus" that growth promoting hormones are safe.

"We remain committed to finding a way to resolve this issue," the statement concluded.

The EU commission said an EU scientific advisory committee had reaffirmed its opinion of last year, which found substantial evidence that 17 beta oestradiol (which the commission proposes for a definitive ban) "should be considered as a complete carcinogen exerting both tumor-initiating and tumor-promoting effects."