Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 9/1/11

U.S. and Mexican government and poultry industry officials began working this week toward a settlement in an antidumping dispute.
The meeting held this week in Mexico City, according to Jim Sumner, president of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Export Council (USAPEEC), was the first face-to-face meeting between the two sides since February when Mexico launched a probe into allegations that U.S. poultry exporters were "dumping," or selling leg quarters below domestic-market prices in Mexico.

USAPEEC presented at the hearing a wide-ranging proposal aimed at preventing trade disruptions while addressing the concerns of the Mexican government and its poultry industry. Both the petitioners and the Mexican government reacted favorably to the proposal, the organization said in a news release.

“Our legal team is quite pleased with the results of Monday’s hearing,” Sumner said. “We accomplished everything we had hoped for, and more. We look at the conciliatory hearing as the beginning of the process to start our discussions with the petitioners to develop a workable settlement.”

Presiding over the hearing was Hugo Perezcano, head of the Mexican Unit of International Trade Practices (UPCI), who said UPCI would extend the conciliatory hearing process, encouraging both sides to continue working toward a settlement. He said, however, that the agency would continue its investigation nonetheless.

Perezcano said Tuesday that UPCI would publish its preliminary determination in the investigation on Sept. 30.

Meanwhile, he asked that USAPEEC, in consultation with the Mexican Poultry Producers Association, and the NAFTA Egg & Poultry Partnership — a bilateral industry-to-industry group — continue to fine-tune its proposal for submission by Sept. 14. Industrias Bachoco, the Mexican poultry firm that raised the anti-dumping issue earlier this year, will then have until Sept. 30 to respond to the proposal. The two sides aim to reach a consensus by Oct. 7.

USAPEEC put the importance of the conciliatory hearing in context: Although Mexican trade law provides for such hearings as a mechanism for working toward resolution of trade disputes, they are rare. Mexico’s last conciliatory hearing more than a decade ago was also its first.

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