US to put OIE guidelines second
27/05/2009
The vice-chair of the US Meat Export Federation (USMEF), Keith Miller, a farmer-stockman from Great Bend, Kansas, said that the organisation’s members received positively the message the country’s trade representative, Alan Kirk, delivered during an address in Washington on May 22 (see leatherbiz, May 26).
“He was very inspiring and showed that he really understands our concerns about market access,” Mr Miller said. “I feel this man is truly in our corner, trying to help make US agriculture profitable and help us be able to feed people across the world.”
USMEF members concluded their annual business meeting by approving two resolutions. One resolution calls for greater flexibility in US trade policy that will accommodate incremental gains in market access for beef, rather than an approach that insists on full compliance with International Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) guidelines. The other resolution supports consistent, science-based trade policies for exports and imports that will help the US avoid what the organisation has referred to as “trade impasses”, in which a trading partner that feels it is being treated unfairly exerts leverage by limiting or prohibiting market access for US meat.
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