Hendrik Dierendonck, a second generation butcher who has become, as he describes, “famous World Cup in Belgium” for his organized local beef, thinks that the way Europe increases cattle leads to various and delicious cuts that the European consumer price.
“They want without hormone, nourished with grass,” said Dierendonck while cutting steaks in a bloody block in his Michelin star restaurant, which fell back on the butcher’s shop that his father started in the 1970s. “They want to know where it comes from.”
The strict food regulations of the European Union, including the ban on hormones, govern the work of Mr. Dierendonck. And these rules could turn into a point of collision of trade war. The Trump administration argues that American meat, produced without similar regulation, is better – and wants Europe to buy more and other American agricultural products.
“They hate our beef because our beef is magnificent,” said Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, in a television interview last month. “And theirs is weak.”
Questions of beauty and strength apart, the administration is right on one thing: European decision -makers do not wish to authorize more American steaks and American hamburgers in the European Union.
An additional work from the European market to American farmers is only a request on a list of requests from the Trump team laundry. American negotiators also want Europe to buy more American gas and trucks, to change their consumption taxes and to weaken their digital regulations.
Trade officials within the European Union are ready to make numerous concessions to avoid a painful and prolonged trade war and to avoid higher prices. They proposed to deposit car rates to zero, buy more gas and increase military purchases. The negotiators even suggested that they could buy more of certain agricultural products, such as soybeans.
But Europeans have their limits, and these include the bones treated in America and the chicken breasts washed by acid.
“EU standards, in particular with regard to food, health and security, are sacrosancting-which is not part of negotiation, and will never be,” said Olof Gill, spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU administrative arm, during a recent press conference. “It’s a red line.”
It is not clear how serious Americans are to put pressure for agricultural products such as beef and chicken. But the subject has surfaced several times. On Thursday, when US officials unveiled a trade agreement with Great Britain, for example, beef was part of the agreement.
But according to Great Britain, the agreement would simply make it cheaper for Americans to export more beef without hormones to the country and do not weaken the rules of British health and safety, which are similar to those of the EU
Regarding the European Union, the United States can already export a large amount of hormone beef without facing prices, so an equivalent case would not do much to help American farmers.
But European diplomats and officials have repeatedly insisted that there is no room for maneuver to reduce health and safety standards. And with regard to commercial restrictions related to meat more widely, there are very few. Chicken, for example, faces relatively high prices, and there is a limited appetite to reduce these rates.
Indeed, protecting Europe both of its food culture and its farms.
When America tends to have massive agricultural businesses, Europeans have maintained a more robust network of small family operations. The block of 27 countries has around nine million farms, compared to about two million in the United States.
Subsidies and commercial restrictions contribute to maintaining the agricultural system of Europe intact. The European Union allocates a large part of its budget to support farmers and a mixture of prices and quotas limits competition in sensitive areas. EU prices on agricultural products are around 11% on the whole, based on the estimates of the World Trade Organization, although they vary enormously depending on the products.
And the block could place higher rates on American agricultural products if commercial negotiations fall. Their list of products that could face charges of reprisals, published Thursday, include beef and pork, as well as many soy and bourbon products.
But it is not only the prices limiting European imports of American food. Strict health and safety standards also keep many foreign products off the European grocery shelves.
Take beef. Mr. Dierendonck and other European farmers are prohibited from using growth stimulants, unlike the United States, where cattle are often high on large fattening parks with the use of hormones. European security officials have concluded that they cannot exclude risks for human health from the hormone -raised beef.
To Mr. Dierendonck, the rules also correspond to European preferences. The lack of hormones results in a less homogeneous product. “Each terroir has its taste,” he explains, describing the unique “oral sensation” of the Western Flemish Red Cow that he raises on his farm on the Belgian coast.
But beef agriculture without hormones is more expensive. And American exporters must adhere to hormonal limits when sending steaks, burgers or dairy products to the EU countries, which, according to European farmers, is just right. Otherwise, imports produced using cheaper methods could put European farmers out of business.
“We cannot accept imported products that do not meet our production standards,” said Dominique Chargé, a livestock producer in the West of France, who is also president of agricultural cooperation, a national federation representing French agricultural cooperatives.
The result is that the United States does not sell a lot of beef to Europe. It is more logical economic logic for American farmers to sell on markets that allow cattle raised by hormones.
A frequent American complaint is that European health standards are more a matter of preference than real health.
American scientists have called the risks of hormonal use in minimal cows. And although EU officials and consumers are frequently sneer from the American “chlorinated chickens”, this rallying cry is a bit dated. American farmers have been using vinegar acid for years, not chlorine, to rinse poultry and kill potential pathogens.
Some studies in Europe have suggested that such treatments do not replace to raise a chicken in a way that makes it without pathogen from the start. American scientists have concluded that rinsing do their job and are not harmful to humans.
“I don’t know it’s really about science,” said Dianna Bourassa, a microbiologist specializing in poultry at the University of Auburn. “In my microbiological opinion, there are no implications for health.”
From the point of view of European farmers, however, if health risks are authentic, that’s the point. As long as European voters oppose chicken chemical treated and beef treated with hormone, European farmers cannot use these agricultural techniques.
“When you speak to our farmers, it is equity,” said Pieter Verhelst, member of the board of directors of a Belgian farmers’ union, Boerenbond. “The political framework with which we start is completely different, and these problems are especially completely out of the hands of farmers.”
And European consumers seem to support the EU food and agriculture rules.
Farmers’ protests last year were high and strongly opposed more beef imports from South America countries, partly about the concerns that cows could be increased with growth hormone. A trade agreement from the Obama era died in part thanks to popular anger in the face of “chlorine chicken” (“chlorhünchen”, for derisory the Germans.)
EU public opinion polls have suggested that policies that promote agriculture and farmers are very popular. In a survey in 2020, in person throughout the block, almost 90% of Europeans agreed with the idea that agricultural imports “should only enter the EU if their production complied with EU environmental and animal protection standards”.
In Europe, including the butcher’s shop and the farm of Mr. Dierendonck, there is a value granted in the old -fashioned and small scale to do things, decision -makers and farmers have agreed. Mr. Dierendonck buys American beef for customers who ask for it – it is easy to cook, he said – but it’s a small part of the business.
“I really like American beef, but I don’t really like it,” said Dierendonck, explaining to him that the beef that his European suppliers provide is varied, like a good wine. “For me, it’s about keeping traditions alive.”
