Soon after the trade talks with the US official Daniel Price, President Bush’s economic adviser, the EU industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen said, he would strongly recommend to the EU member states to revoke the ban on the US chicken imports. More than a decade-old ban had wiped out $180 million on lost sales annually to the US.
The ban was imposed 11 years ago on the ground that the American chickens were washed in a chlorine solution, thereby not suitable for human consumption. The call is to remove trader barriers between the two parties that have been persisting for some time due to red tape and connecting politics with trade.
Verheugen further clarified that the proposal to remove ban has been made after receiving the scientific opinion that did not support the basis for the continuation of the import ban. The trade talk officials hope, they would be able to resolve this issue by next meeting of the Trans-Atlantic Economic Council in October.
However, there are still some misgivings about the outright support for the issue from the entire EU member states, in spite of Verheugen’s claims of majority support. The EU industry commissioner said that he was confident about resolving the issue soon because several ministers of the EU states have already pledged support for the cause. Price said that he was optimistic about the EC’s effort to convince the members to drop the restrictions.
Though the two-way trade between the US and the EU reached a staggering $1.6 billion a day last year, both complain the red tape is creating unnecessary delay in business processes. Businesses from both sides expect the meeting of the Trans-Atlantic Economic Council in October would be able to remove road blocks of other areas of trade, besides chicken. Among the other issues discussed at the talks, the US appealed to the EU to have are re-look at the new chemical norm that mandated tough registration process called REACH for the chemical and pharmaceutical exporters to the EU.