Canada and South Korea may be able to strike a deal on opening that market to Canadian beef, short-circuiting a lengthy World Trade Organization challenge, says agriculture minister Gerry Ritz.
He told the House of Commons agriculture committee Nov. 18 that Canadian and Korean trade officials continue to discuss the possibility of an out-of-court settlement that would end Canada’s dispute resolution panel case at WTO.
The Korean market has been closed since the outbreak of BSE in Canada in 2003.
“The Koreans are hopeful of that and so are we,” he told reporters after the Parliament Hill meeting. “They have to be serious about what they are offering us. It has to be commercially viable. We’re not about to take a pig-in-a-poke, literally, in this case beef.”
But he said the Canadian government “remains hopeful” that a deal with reasonable timelines and quantities for market access can be worked out soon.
He credited officials from the Agriculture Canada market access secretariat with leading the effort to negotiate a deal.
Ritz and prime minister Stephen Harper also have regularly raised the issue with Korean officials at the political level.
Canada has taken Korea to the WTO but the case could drag on for several years if a deal is not reached.
Meanwhile, Canada’s WTO challenge of United States’ Country-of-Origin Labelling rules likely will not be settled anytime soon, a senior Agriculture Canada official told MPs.
Greg Meredith, assistant deputy minister for the strategic policy branch, said the last arguments will be made to the WTO dispute resolution panel in December in Geneva.
A decision is expected next summer.
Meredith said if the U.S. loses the case and decides to appeal, that would delay a resolution into 2012.
Meanwhile, Canadian beef and hog producers will continue to suffer lower prices and access before of the COOL rule, he said.
