GENEVA - Member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) decided on Tuesday to scrap two global agreements which gathered market information on meat and on dairy products from the end of this year.
The decision means that both the pacts -- the International Bovine Meat Agreement and the International Dairy Agreement -- and the WTO bodies supervising them -- the International Meat Council and the International Dairy Council -- will disappear.
The two pacts were launched in 1980 after the Tokyo Round of world trade negotiations and were aimed at expanding and liberalising trade in the two sectors.
A total of 31 countries, including the 15 members of the European Union and the United States, were signatories to the meat pact and the Council, which provided a forum for discussion on world trade in beef, veal and live cattle.
Other signatories included Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Uruguay.
The dairy pact -- which covered all dairy products and until recently laid down minimum export prices for world trade in some milk powders, milk fat including butter and certain cheeses -- had 24 signatories, including the EU 15.
Other members included Argentina, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
But the operation of the minimum prices was dropped in 1995 because the non-participation of some major dairy-exporting countries like the United States and Australia made their maintenance impossible, trade officials say.
Both pacts, originally operated under the old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which was absorbed into the WTO in 1995, were included in the global treaty setting up the new trade body signed in Morocco in 1994.
In the last two years, the main function of the two councils has been to produce annual reports on the two sectors with research carried out by the WTO Secretariat.
Discussion began in July on wrapping up the councils and the pacts but initially the EU argued the information they provided was still useful. But trade sources said Brussels had now joined the consensus that they could be dissolved.
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