International Trade Agreements • Volume 8 • Number 10 • 30th May 2008

EU Appeals Latest Beef-Hormone Ruling

Do More

See also

On 29 May, the EU appealed a WTO ruling on a long-standing case related to European restrictions on imports of hormone-treated beef from the US and Canada.

The ruling, released on 31 March, faulted all three parties to the case for not adhering to WTO rules and procedures (see Bridges Trade Biores, 4 April 2008, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/08-04-04/story2.htm). The panel found that the EU’s import ban on hormone-treated beef — despite modifications in 2003 in response to an earlier WTO ruling — was not compliant with multilateral trade rules, since it was not backed by an adequate scientific risk assessment. As such, the panel effectively sided with US and Canadian claims that the EU’s ban remained scientifically unjustified. Therefore, the import prohibition failed to meet the requirements of the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (SPS Agreement), which governs the use of health and safety-related trade barriers.

The panel did rule that the US and Canada were in error as well: it said that Washington and Ottawa failed to follow proper WTO procedures when they retained over US$125 million in annual sanctions dating back to 1999 on EU exports such as Roquefort cheese and Dijon mustard, based on unilateral determinations that even the updated import ban breached the EU’s trade obligations.

In its appeal, the EU said it “disagrees with the panel’s finding that it did not consider the new EU hormones directive to comply with the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. The panel also failed to make a sufficiently clear recommendation to the effect that the U.S. and Canada must remove their WTO-illegal retaliatory measures.”

The other parties to the dispute, most notably the US, may also decide to appeal the ruling.

ICTSD reporting; “EU appeals WTO ruling over US, Canadian beef hormone ban,” AFP, 29 May 2008; “EU Appeals WTO Ruling on U.S., Canada Sanctions Over Hormones,” BLOOMBERG, 29 May 2008.