WASHINGTON - U.S. cattle producers have resigned themselves to at least three more months of delay before an eight-year-old beef market access dispute with the European Union is resolved.
"We expect (the EU will) make an eleventh-hour appeal" next week to avoid opening their market to beef produced with artificial growth hormones, Chuck Lambert, chief economist with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said.
"They tend to use the system to the maximum extent the law allows," he said.
Earlier this year, a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel agreed with the United States that the EU's ban on beef produced with artificial growth hormones violated terms of the 1995 Uruguay Round world trade pact.
Since then, EU officials have said they plan to appeal the decision, but have not yet taken that step.
The WTO dispute settlement panel is scheduled to meet again on September 25 to begin arbitration procedures aimed at finally resolving the dispute.
But before that happens, the cattlemen expect the EU to file an appeal. That would delay the case for an additional 90 days while a WTO appeals panel decides whether to uphold or overturn the dispute settlement panel's decision.
The NCBA is confident the United States will win on the appeal and is already looking ahead to the final negotiations.
Under WTO rules, the EU could agree to provide market access or pay compensation for the lost sales.
"Our position is that compensation is not acceptable," Lambert said. "We want them to live up to their responsibility as a major trading partner" and open their market, he said.
When the EU first blocked imports of beef produced with artificial growth hormones in 1989, the United States estimated lost trade at $100 million annually.
More recently, the NCBA has estimated the value of lost trade at $250 million - given the growth in U.S. sales that they say would have occurred.
But the group is reluctant to stick with that figure now because of the concern that a final settlement could "split the difference" at $175 million, Lambert said.
The cattlemen want full market access, so "we just say it's costing us hundreds of millions of dollars," he said.
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