Source: POLTICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 2/19/20

The Trump administration on Tuesday didn’t pull any punches at an international gathering to review European trade policies, like its strict food standards and tight restrictions on agricultural chemicals, writes POLITICO Europe’s Jakob Hanke.

Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Dennis Shea, speaking at the biannual WTO meeting, said the U.S. is “troubled by the EU’s unjustified non-tariff barriers that impede the use of modern agricultural tools and technologies such as biotechnology, veterinary drugs and pathogen reduction treatments.”

Brussels has slapped restrictions on chemically washed chicken and certain GMO crops and clamped down on the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock production, aiming to control the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria. Shea said those rules, which the EU has tried to establish in global trade arrangements, impede efforts to modernize agriculture in developing nations.