EU keeps door open to U.S. beef imports

   The European Union will continue to provide U.S. beef producers with significant access, at zero duty, to the EU market for high-quality beef produced from non-hormone-treated cattle.
   The United States and European Union are planning to extend for two years Phase 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2009 in connection with the United States’ long-running dispute with the European Union over its ban on beef from cattle treated with certain growth-promoting hormones.
   In the year since Phase 2 began, U.S. beef shipments under the quota were an estimated $200 million, up 300 percent from the value of exports in the year before the MOU entered into force. Under the extension, the European Union would maintain until Aug. 2, 2015, its duty-free tariff rate quota for high-quality beef at the quantity of 45,000 metric tons per year.
   “I am very pleased that American ranchers and meat processors will be allowed to ship substantial quantities of high-quality U.S. beef into a market worth millions of dollars to their bottom lines,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman in a statement. “Before the memorandum of understanding was signed, the EU’s beef market had been largely closed for far too long. The substantial market access that we have achieved since 2009 shows what we can accomplish with practical, problem-solving approaches to trade barriers.”