Union’s aspirations collide with global realities

By Tim King

Date: 24/02/05

It is in the area of trade policy that the EU's aspirations to improve animal welfare collide most dramatically with the realities of commerce in a global marketplace.

The importance that the EU attaches, or professes to attach, to animal welfare is not reciprocated the world over.

Although the EU derives its standards from Council of Europe conventions, animal welfare standards are rarely defined at an international level.

In the absence of a consensus over norms, animal welfare can be undermined by competition from exporters with lower standards.

A Commission study in 2002, which identified the risk that animal welfare would be undermined by competitive distortions, mooted various ways to preserve standards.

One route was through the World Organisation for Animal Health, better known by its French acronym as the OIE, which has been trying to increase awareness of the link between good animal husbandry and animal health. The OIE has won commitments from its 167 members to develop policies that will promote animal welfare recognising that it is a "multi-faceted public policy issue that includes important scientific, ethical, economic and political dimensions".

The OIE committed itself to develop policies on the treatment of all sorts of animals ranging from those used in agriculture to those used in research or those in "sport, recreation and entertainment".

Whatever the ambition, for the moment the priority is animals used in agriculture, particularly because of the potential for poor animal health to have a devastating effect on world trade. The chief concern at present is about how far the outbreak of avian flu in south-east Asia might extend. The Commission is hoping that the OIE will be the means to get animal welfare standards recognised worldwide.

Although the EU does seek to promote animal welfare standards in trade arrangements, it has to be careful not to fall foul of its obligations to comply with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The existing WTO rules give the EU hardly any freedom to discriminate between importers on animal welfare grounds.

The Eurogroup for Animal Welfare charges the WTO rules with holding up a ban on the import of fur from countries that still permit the use of leghold traps and delaying introduction of a ban on the marketing of cosmetics tested on animals when humane alternatives exist.

In the negotiations over a new WTO trade round, the EU has been trying to give itself more room for manoeuvre to take animal welfare into account.

Aside from export subsidies and other forms of aid that are at the heart of agriculture matters in the WTO round, the EU has made clear that it also wants the agreement to address protected geographical indicators and "non-trade concerns". Among the EU's non-trade concerns is animal welfare.

An interim agreement last summer on the negotiations framework accepted that non-trade concerns would be addressed.

A Commission spokesman said: "We want this to be a central part of these negotiations. We believe it's very important. We don't believe we should be punished for having higher standards."

But what protection the EU will secure for animal welfare in the WTO negotiations is by no means certain.

"It's still a live issue. There is no outcome yet," the Commission spokesman said.

Countries like Norway, Switzerland and Japan are arguing that they should be allowed to resort even to trade-distorting measures (such as export subsidies) to promote their non-trade concerns, about, for example, the protection of a rural way of life.

There seems to be greater acceptance that non-trade concerns can receive support so long as such support is not trade-distorting. And it may be that the EU will limit its demands.

The EU's financial support for rural development could meet such criteria. But quite how much importance the rural development programme should attach to animal welfare is a matter of some debate. The current rural development programmes, for the period 2000-06, include no specific animal welfare projects, because animal welfare was not such a high priority when the programmes were being developed. Two countries, the UK and Ireland, are currently putting forward suggestions to use left-over, unallocated funds for animal welfare purposes.

The Commission has suggested that for the next generation of rural development programmes, from 2007-13, a quarter should be reserved for environment and land management purposes and some of that would have to be spent on animal welfare programmes.

Farm ministers will be discussing these suggestions on Monday (28 February). The suggestion that animal welfare measures should be compulsory is supported by the UK and Nordic states but has met with resistance from some other countries.

That is an indication of differences of opinion within and between the EU states as to what importance to attach to animal welfare and how much money to put behind it.

The EU is still searching for ways to promote animal welfare while not penalising its farmers and producers.

Article suggests that it is in the area of trade policy that the EU's aspirations to improve animal welfare collide most dramatically with the realities of commerce in a global marketplace. It says that the importance that the EU attaches, or professes to attach, to animal welfare is not reciprocated the world over.