The Beef Hormones Dispute

The Beef Hormones Dispute

  • Submitted By: krisela
  • Date Submitted: 12/11/2013 11:55 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 526
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 120

The safety of meat and meat products has been an important issue over last years for several reasons. These reasons include greater global trade, evolving consumer preferences and the public’s increasing desire for products with minimal processing,
In recent years, there have been regular clashes between the European Communities (“EC”) and the United States (“US”) “over the social, ethical, and environmental implications of producing, and trading the products of modern science. This was named as the Beef Hormones Dispute.
The case started when in 1989 the EC imposed an almost complete ban on beef treated with growth hormones. This measure resulted in the prohibition of the importation of most US beef, since the use of growth hormones is allowed in the US and widely used by the American farmers. The ban led to an extreme reduction of the importation of US beef and caused the US to strongly oppose the ban. In fact U.S. beef and veal exports to the EU dropped about 93 percent in 1 year!. Consequently, the case was brought to the Dispute Settlement Body (“DSB”) of the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) twice.

The main problem in the dispute between the United States and the European Union in the beef hormone dispute is to determine the extent that a country can use health or other concerns to prohibit trade. The major aspect of this dilemma is that the United States and Europe have different regulations concerning beef. Although the beef meets American and International standards it doesn’t meet some European regulations.

Even though the case went to the WTO and there were recommendations made, the have problem between the United States and the European Union has not been solved. In the case study it informs us that after the ruling in the favor of removing the barrier due to a lack of scientific evidence that hormone treated beef is bad, that the European Union persisted in the ban of all hormone treated beef (Moss 2002). In retaliation the United States...

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