Jean Halloran, Director Food Policy Initiatives, Consumers Union, USA

Transcription

1 Verbraucherpolitisches Forum zur IGW 2010 am in Berlin Chlor, Klon & Co KG Lebensmittelstandards unter Druck Redebeitrag Jean Halloran, Director Food Policy Initiatives, Consumers Union, USA US consumer views on hormones, clones, chicken and food safety standards I appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the views of American consumers on these very interesting food standards issues. I come from the largest consumer organization in the United States: our magazine, Consumer Reports has 4 million print subscribers and another 3 million paid on line web subscribers. With beef hormones, dairy cow hormones, cloned food animals, and chlorinetreated chicken, there are divergences in policy between the EU and the US, and World Trade Organization (WTO) challenges are either in progress or looming. You ask the question, are European food safety standards threatened? The question may be broader are all high standards for food everywhere in danger? To answer these questions you have to ask, do these cases reflect the proper role of the WTO in increasing useful trade and preventing protectionism? Or is the WTO agreement driving standards toward the least common denominator towards the low end of the scale, and getting in the way of dealing with consumer desires, new risks, and important issues like the environment? I think it is worthwhile to look further at these cases and see what they tell us about these questions. We should start with what the WTO requires of food standards. Under the WTO agreements, all food safety standards should be scientifically based. The purpose is to avoid standards that claim to be about food safety, but are really are designed to protect a given country s own products, resulting in needlessly high prices for consumers. To give a hypothetical example, one could imagine that the US apple industry might suggest a standard that said that only apples harvested from August through October are safe. The effect of such a hypothetical standard would be to exclude apples from Chile from the US market, because they are harvested in February and March. But under WTO rules, such a standard would be unacceptable and subject to challenge because it has no scientific basis, and is protectionist in its intent. WTO explicitly recognizes Codex Alimentarius, a UN body, as a body that establishes standards about which there is global consensus at to the science. Unfortunately not all such standards issues are so simple. In fact, many of them are not simple at all, including the ones we are discussing today. In practice, there are many food safety standards for which Codex has not agreed on any global norm. Science is not nearly as precise or certain as

2 2 trade officials would like it to be. New things keep being discovered, and many effects of chemicals and practices remain poorly understood. Even on something that is as well researched as the fact that lead or arsenic are poisons, there can be endless scientific arguments over exactly how much lead or arsenic is dangerous in products, and how the danger should be controlled. Let s turn now to the four cases we are considering today. First, I would like to make some general observations as to where US and EU views are similar and where they diverge. In general the EU and US tend to agree about what the human health, animal health, environmental, social and ethical issues are. They often, but not always agree about which scientific studies shed light on the discussion. When they consider however how to deal with gaps in the data, with scientific uncertainties, and with how far to go to protect consumers and prevent risk, their views diverge significantly. And when it comes to setting standards that incorporate concerns about issues other than direct impact on human health, such as indirect impact on human health, animal welfare, environmental impact and ethics, they diverge enormously. Let s look at the specific cases. Cloned Animals Cloning is a new and controversial technology that we all know from pictures of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal clone, created in the UK in One thing that is very clear is that cloning is unsafe for the animals involved. More that 90 percent of clones die either in gestation or within a few months after birth. Many are born with deformities and deficient immune systems. They tend to require large doses of antibiotics to fight infection when young. The push to create clones in the US comes from owners of prize bulls, who have a lucrative business in selling bull semen. However every prize bull eventually gets too old for the job. If the owner can clone the bull, he can continue to market the bull s genetics indefinitely. Clone semen is already on the market. In an Associated Press report from a year ago, a Kansas farmer admitted to making such sales. American consumers views of milk and meat from cloned animals is extremely negative. A June 2007 Consumers Union poll found that 69 percent of respondents were concerned about eating meat or milk from a cloned animal, and 89 percent agreed that such products should be labeled. A September 2007 poll by the International Food Information Council found that 50 percent of Americans viewed cloning unfavorably, and 53 percent said they were unlikely to buy such food even if the FDA said it was safe. The FDA did in fact declare such milk and meat to be safe in January 2008, and further said it would not require any special labeling. While acknowledging, the problems with deaths and deformities, FDA concluded that this would not affect consumers since inspectors at slaughterhouses are supposed to keep any sickly or deformed animals out of the food supply (the possibility of failures in this system was not considered). FDA did not consider

3 3 any indirect health effects such as the impact of increased antibiotics use on the worldwide problem of increasing antibiotic resistance. FDA said that under US law it has no authority to consider moral, religious or ethical issues; therefore it ignored them. Clones may soon however be prohibited from organic production in the United States. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also issued an opinion that milk and meat from cloned animals is safe. The similarity of its conclusion to the FDA may not be entirely a coincidence. The primary author of the FDA risk assessment was invited by EFSA to help prepare its independent opinion on the subject. The EU differs significantly from the US however in having a mechanism for addressing ethical and animal welfare issues, and concluding on that basis that cloning should not be allowed. It is the view of Consumers Union that this technology should in fact be prohibited for food production in the United States because of its negative effects on animal health. If it is allowed it should at least be required to be labeled so that consumers who want to avoid such food will be able to avoid it. Beef and Dairy Hormones Two different types of hormones are in use on cattle in the United States for two different purposes. Hormones resembling estrogen and testosterone, the sex hormones, have been used for many years to increase weight gain in castrated male cattle. The industry states that steers must be castrated to make them manageable. Then they must be given hormones to make them put on the muscle meat that ultimately becomes beef. These hormones in beef production are not of widespread concern to American consumers, and the government allows their use, except in production of organic beef. Part of the difference in policy may come from that fact that there are different trade offs in European and American production systems. The issue of docility of the animals may be more important in the larger industrial type feedlots common in the United States for beef production, whereas it may not be so important in European systems. This yields a different trade off if there is little or no need for the hormones in Europe why take any risk at all by allowing their use? In any case, the very good news is that after decades of impasse on this issue at WTO there appears to be progress among trade negotiators towards resolution of this issue. Much more prominent in the US has been the issue of use of genetically engineered growth hormone, a drug originally produced by Monsanto, called rbgh. Use of this drug can increase a dairy cow s milk output. However, this drug is also clearly damaging to animal health the FDA acknowledged in 1994 that it significantly increases mastitis in dairy cows infections of the udder that must be treated with antibiotics. Some scientists also raised

4 4 questions about whether increased levels of IGF-1, another hormone, in milk from treated cows, might pose a human health risk. Although animal drugs in the US should be safe for animals, FDA said this drug represented a manageable risk and could thus be approved. Canada, the European Union and several other countries rejected the drug on animal health grounds. Dozens of polls over the last decade have shown that overwhelming majorities of American consumers are concerned and want milk from rbgh-treated cows to be labeled. A Consumers Union national poll in 2007 for example that found that 76 percent of respondents are concerned about dairy products from treated cows, and 88 percent support mandatory labeling. FDA refused to require such labeling of dairy products on the grounds that there were no significant differences between the milk of treated and untreated cows. They also argued that consumers have enough choice, because use of this hormone is prohibited from organic production, and dairies could voluntarily label their milk as from cows not treated with rbgh. In fact voluntary labeling of products, in cases where there are uncertainties about safety or impacts on animal health, is often put forward in the United States as the appropriate way to deal with controversial food standards issues. This is probably in line with our culture and values that put a premium on individuals being responsible for their own welfare. Interestingly, however, in the last several years, as health consciousness grew in the US, more and more consumers began to switch to milk that came from untreated cows. This prompted Monsanto, which saw a steep decline in its sales of the drug, to launch a campaign to ban any labeling of milk at all. It found sponsors in eight states for laws or regulations that would have prohibited the rbgh-free label within the state. Fortunately strong consumer activism defeated these measures. It remains the view of Consumers Union that rbgh should not have been approved for use on dairy cows in the United States, given the questions about its safety for humans and the obvious negative effects on the cows. FDA also failed to consider the indirect impact of increased antibiotic use necessitated by rbgh use, on the broader problem of antibiotic resistance. Having approved it, FDA should have required mandatory labeling, so consumers had easily available choices. We support, however, the continuation of voluntary labeling, which makes possible some choice and has allowed consumers to vote with their pocketbooks on this food standards issue. Chicken and Chlorine Baths Consumers Union has just completed a test project which is conducts every three years on chicken purchased at retail in the United States, and found that two thirds of the 382 samples tested were contaminated with salmonella, campylobacter or both. Salmonella was found on 14 percent of the broilers tested. If the chlorine baths are supposed to make US chicken safe, they are failing badly.

5 5 The EU takes a different approach to assuring chicken safety, with sanitation and bacteria control requirements all though the process, rather than at the end point. An EFSA report on Salmonella presence in broiler flocks in shows that some countries do better than others with this approach. Norway, Sweden and Finland, with very stringent controls on production, all had contamination rates of a tenth of a percent or less. Denmark, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania came in with under 3 percent contamination. Germany was about in the middle, with 15 percent contaminated about the same as the rate we found in the US. At the other extreme was Poland, with 58 percent contaminated, and Hungary, at 68 percent contaminated. Another interesting finding of the Consumers Union test project was that certain brands of organic chicken had no salmonella at all. Organic chicken cannot use chlorine washes, although it can use other disinfecting processes at the end of the slaughter process. But this shows clearly that other means exist that can accomplish salmonella control. Consumers Union disagrees with the US government s decision to file a WTO challenge against the EU for prohibiting chicken treated with chlorine. Those resources could have been much better used in a joint effort to improve the safety of everyone s chicken. We believe that the EU approach, and the success of the US organic industry, shows that bacteria can be controlled without the use of this environmentally damaging chemical. Conclusions Thinking about these cases, what can we learn from them? I d like to suggest several conclusions. I believe it is true that European food safety standards, and high food safety standards everywhere even in the United States are put in danger by the WTO agreement as it is now structured. First, the WTO agreement makes unrealistic assumptions about science and what it has to offer that somehow science will have an absolute and complete answer to every standards question. Science is essential to creating standards, but there are also lots of scientific unknowns, as is true with beef and dairy hormone use and cloning. WTO dispute resolution processes need to give more credance to the precautionary principle. Second, even where trading partners agree on the science, they may conduct what we generally call risk management in very different ways, and tradeoffs and context are always important here. While all informed parties may agree about the level of risk posed by beef hormone use, the choice about whether to allow it is influenced by the agricultural production system. Such factors in risk management do not have a clear place in the WTO framework. Finally, in the context of the WTO agreement, countries agreed not to pay any attention to each other s production systems for products, except by allowing labels, and only to prohibit products that posed a health hazard. It is very

6 6 difficult in the WTO system as currently structured, to made decisions based on what Codex refers to as other legitimate factors. Codex says standards may consider such factors, which might include indirect human health effects such as increasing antibiotic resistance, animal welfare issues, environmental impact including carbon footprint, and ethical concerns might be taken into account in setting standards. However because countries often have such different views on these factors, they seldom make it into Codex standards, and thus into the unofficial WTO law book. What is the solution? Barring a rewriting of the agreements underlying the WTO, consumers are arguing that countries should pull back from disputes over food standards, particularly where they are up against different value systems and societal goals. Food choices are deeply personal and social, and countries are in fact making a serious error about consumers if they try to force food on consumers of another country that they simply do not want. On the one hand, standards can and must be evaluated in terms of whether they are applied equally to domestically produced and to foreign products, and as to whether they are obviously protectionist in intent. But countries should not try to force their food values on others. The WTO system also suffers from being a closed system and should find ways to be more open. The WTO has no provision for public participation in dispute resolution. Codex Alimentarius, to its credit allows international business and citizen organizations like Consumers International to be observers who may participate in debates (although not vote) on food standards. Another agency, however, the OIE, which sets meat safety standards, has no provision for public participation it meets in secret behind closed doors. And allowing public access is just one hurdle; real public participation requires resources to attend very technical meetings in distant locations over a period of years as a standard is developed. In sum the WTO system has been structured to take a very narrow view of the goals that food standards can have when applied to foods that cross borders. This is not good for the future of the planet for assuring humane, sustainable, carbon neutral as well as healthful, tasty and affordable food production systems. The WTO system must adapt to accommodate such goals.