Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 10/4/21
As Washington and Brussels plow ahead with their vastly different views on the future of farming, one trade expert says the key to quelling the emerging transatlantic food fight could be food labeling and putting “power back into the buyers’ hands.”
“What we really need is better labeling at the very minimum, and then let the consumers decide,” Christine McDaniel, a trade expert at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and former U.S. government official, told our colleagues at POLITICO Europe.
More transparency in the supply chain “is going to mean a little more work for everybody along the way,” she said. “If that’s the cost we have to pay to avoid this transatlantic food war that could have ripple effects across the global economy, then I would think that’s worth it.”
Worst-case scenario: “Once you have these two behemoths starting to try to strong-arm other countries and accepting their standards and not other standards,” McDaniel said, “then we get into these tensions that are way outside the scope of the WTO, and that’s where trade economists start to worry that this could end up really restricting trade.”
For example, American officials and industry groups are wary of the EU’s plans to slash pesticide usage and rapidly expand organic farming across the continent — a goal that the U.S. fears would crush crop yields, raise food prices and lead to higher hunger rates.
Asia could be key: “If you start to see countries like China, India, Japan, South Korea, starting to adopt the EU standards, then that I think would be a big push for the U.S. to change some of its inputs,” she said.
Healthy competition: At the same time, McDaniel said it’s good to have a certain amount of competition and debate. “I think it’s kind of healthy for the U.S. and the EU and others to be having discussions about what kind of standards we should have,” she said. “But once you start wanting to set standards for the world, I would argue that’s overreach on both sides of the Atlantic.”
|
