[CTC] Vetter Says USTR Aims To Deliver 'More Completed' TTIP Package For Next Administration

[Arthur Stamoulis]

INSIDE US TRADE
Vetter Says USTR Aims To Deliver 'More Completed' TTIP Package For Next Administration
April 27, 2016

U.S. chief agricultural negotiator Darci Vetter signaled this week that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has been tasked with making as much progress as possible in trade talks with the European Union this year in order to leave an agreement for the next administration that is more completed than the one currently on the table.

“We'll have to make a lot of progress in the next several months in order to really leave for the next group a more completed package, and that's our order, that's what we're working to do,” she said in a briefing with agricultural journalists on April 26.

Informed sources have said that the U.S. and EU are trying to advance the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks as far as possible before President Obama leaves office in order to increase the chances that the next U.S. administration will continue the initiative.

Vetter also said the EU needs to change its system for approval of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and allow antimicrobial washes for meat that are widely used in the U.S. in order for the U.S. to be able to take advantage of increased market access it gets under TTIP. She did not specifically say whether these two issues needed to be resolved as part of TTIP.

“We need to break through all of those [issues] and so we're trying to pair together progress on both our [sanitary and phytosanitary] measures as well as our tariff measures to make sure that any tariff access we get is actually usable at the end of the day. That's not a small issue. It takes time to change those regulatory approaches.”

Vetter said the EU's system for GMO approvals “does not run in a transparent or predictable manner,” referencing the fact that U.S. biotech products face long lead times for approval even after European Food Safety Authority has found them to be safe.

She also blasted the EU's “refusal to allow perfectly safe pathogen reduction treatments in our meat production that prevent our exports of poultry for example.” This refers to the fact that the EU does not allow chlorinated water or peroxyacetic acid to be used as an antimicrobial wash for poultry, even though they are widely applied in the U.S.

Vetter's comments come just days after 26 senators laid out their demands in TTIP to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman that included removing the EU's ban on hormone-treated beef while also warning him that an EU failure to quickly approve biotech products raises questions about its ability to adhere to new obligations in TTIP.
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