The ban on bovine embryos being imported into the European Union slipped under the radar of most exporting nations.
It was so sudden that embryos in transit were caught in limbo. Exporters and their buyers had little or no notice of the new EU law related to the presence of infectious bovine rhinotracheitis or IBR in cattle.
Brian Evans, Canada’s chief veterinarian, said several factors were at play.
For one thing, EU legislation is hard to track.
“I think this got caught up in the expansion of the European Union. A lot of new legislation is being passed as it went from 15 countries to 25. Everybody was focused on the accession legislation, not necessarily the changes to import standards,” he said.
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“Getting beyond BSE: that is what our people have been doing. Working flat out on BSE and they just can’t be as plugged in to all the smaller markets that they normally would. They are busy trying to get live cattle back into the rest of the world and re-establish the export market for Canadian beef and so it is in part a capacity issue for our people,” he said.
North American producers often vaccinate against IBR so their bulls test positive for the disease without having it.
“Yet again we have a problem with foreign legislative change that is not science based. There has been a lot of work done about disease transmission, including IBR, at various stages of embryo growth. The fact that you produce IBR-free embryos even when the donor sire is positive is well known. Treatments can be done to eliminate IBR from the embryo,” Evans said.
“They were working towards international OIE standards, then they provide this legislation that clearly doesn’t follow OIE standards for embryo movement,” he said.
Canada and the EU signed a veterinary equivalency agreement several years ago that is supposed to supercede legislation on animal health.
“Their actions are running contrary to everything they have agreed to with us, contrary to OIE standards and contrary to everything we have seen from them in the past period of months.”
Evans said if the problem is not solved quickly, Canada would likely join with the U.S. trade challenge against the legislation.
“WTO challenges are fraught with a lot of problems and I hope that prior to that stage we will be able to get the EU to sit down with us, with the OIE in a mediation process. They can mediate an issue at a science and technical level. It isn’t binding, however. If the EU decides that they don’t accept the OIE mediation result, it becomes part of the record at the WTO.”
