WASHINGTON - U.S. cattle producers said they were confident that the European Union's latest effort to extend its ban on imports of beef produced with artificial growth hormones would fail.
"It's another stalling tactic," said Alisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
"We don't expect the final decision (on whether the ban violates international trading rules) to be any different from the first decision," Harrison said.
The European Commission announced Thursday that it was appealing a World Trade Organization panel ruling in July that the EU's eight-year-old ban on imports of hormone-treated beef violated the 1995 Uruguay Round trade pact.
EU officials charged that the WTO panel ignored evidence presented by some scientists on the health risks of eating beef produced with artificial growth hormones.
They also said that the WTO panel had misinterpreted "sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) provisions" of the Uruguay Round pact. Those provisions govern food safety issues.
"It states clearly in the SPS that WTO contracting parties themselves have the sovereign right to set appropriate levels of public health (protection)," an EU aide in Brussels said.
However, those rules still must be based on sound science, the NCBA's president-elect Clark Willingham said.
Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the EU Commission previously have concluded that the five growth promotants used in cattle production "are safe for both livestock and for people who eat meat," he said.
U.S. beef producers have used growth hormones in cattle production for more than 30 years.
Under WTO rules, an appeals panel now has 90 days to review the case and make a decision.
If the United States again wins, the EU could decide to either open its market or pay compensation.
The NCBA, which wants market access, estimates that the EU ban costs the United States in the range of $250 million each year in lost trade.
The United States already exports more than $2.5 billion worth of beef annually, with much of that going to Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Canada.
The opportunity to make sales to EU would be a welcome addition, NCBA aides said.
But almost more important than that is influence the case could have in discouraging other countries from erecting trade barriers not based on sound science, they said.
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