In little more than a year, the toehold that Canadian beef exports once had in Western Europe should be restored, senior federal trade officials predicted last week.
John Klassen, a director general at the foreign affairs department, told members of Parliament Feb. 5 that Canada’s trade panel victory over a European Union ban on imports of beef from hormone-treated cattle is an important precedent.
He said the EU will have to restore access within 15 months after the ruling is accepted by the World Trade Organization at a Feb. 13 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
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“Our expectation is that the European Union will bring their measures into conformity with the rules and allow the trade to begin,” Klassen said during an appearance before the House of Commons agriculture committee.
The result likely will not be a huge increase in Canadian beef trade.
Lost millions
Before the EU banned use of growth hormones in European herds and blocked imports from hormone-treated herds abroad in 1989, Canada sold just $9 million worth of beef into Western Europe. Since the ban, exports have dwindled to just over $1 million.
Canada, as well as the United States, challenged the ban as a breach of the sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules signed in 1995 as part of the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
The agreement requires any import restrictions based on health and safety concerns be based on science and an extensive risk assessment.
A WTO trade panel decided the EU had not followed that rule, effectively deciding the ban was a form of disguised trade barrier.
In mid-January, an appeal panel upheld the ruling.
The EU has no choice but to implement it, although it may try to use the 1999 round of world trade talks to try to negotiate a new rule, said Klassen.
He said the real value of the ruling may be its precedent, since it was the first test of how the new sanitary rules will be interpreted and enforced.
