Soybean Growers Press USTR to Not Accept EU Trade Limitations
Soybean farmers have a vested interest in seeing barriers to transatlantic trade reduced, the American Soybean Association said in comments to the U.S. Trade Representative. Barriers, such as the European Union’s discriminatory biotech labeling requirements and renewable energy standards, have had a significantly negative impact on soybean exports to the EU in recent years, with a 44 percent decline in the value of EU-bound exports between 1998 and 2011, and a 70 percent drop in export volume during the same period, the ASA said.
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"Central to our concerns with EU biotech labeling and renewable energy regulations is the fact that they represent discriminatory non-tariff barriers to U.S. access to EU markets for soybeans and soybean products, and have no basis in scientific fact," said ASA President Steve Wellman in the comments. "Instead, the EU has invoked the so-called Precautionary Principle, under which unsubstantiated concerns about the safety of biotech products to health and the environment are deemed sufficient to require labeling them."
He also said the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive sets "arbitrary criteria for the production of soybeans and other commodities in order to meet sustainability requirements and be eligible as feedstocks for biofuels used in EU Member States. In combination with the EU’s biotech labeling regulations, the RED will effectively eliminate imports of U.S. soybeans, since soybean oil will not be used either as an ingredient in food products or as a feedstock for biodiesel production."
Wellman said allowing the EU to establish unsubstantiated process-based labeling requirements or to impose arbitrary environmental criteria on imports and on producers in countries from which they are imported "will only invite additional EU regulatory initiatives in other sectors that could offset any positive benefits which an FTA might achieve in reducing domestic or export subsidies or tariffs."