Hendrik Dierendonck, a second generation butcher who has become, as described, “worldwide famous in Belgium” for its cured local horn, believes that the way in which Europe increases cattle results in varied and delicious cuts that European consumers are prioritized.
“They want without hormones fueled with grass,” said Mr. DiRendonck recently while cutting fillets in a bloody block in their restaurant with Michelin stars, which goes back in the butcher shop that his father began in the 1970s. “They want to know where it came from.”
The strict food regulations of the European Union, including the prohibition of hormones, govern the work of Mr. Dierenck. And those rules could become a commercial war conflict point. The Trump administration argues that American meat, produced without similar regulations, is better, and wants Europe to buy more from it and other American agricultural products.
“They hate our beef because the meat is beautiful,” said Howard Lutnick, secretary of Commerce, in a televised interview last month. “And yours is weak.”
Leaving the beauty and strength questions aside, the administration is correct about one thing: European policy formulators are not interested in allowing more American fillets and hamburgers raised in hormones in the European Union.
The opening of the European market to American farmers is just a question in a list of requests from the Trump team. American negotiators also because Europe will buy more American gas and trucks, to change their consumption taxes and to reject their digital regulations.
Commercial officials within the European Union are willing to make many concessions to avoid a painful and prolonged commercial war and to avoid higher rates. They have offered to leave cars to zero tariffs, buy more gasoline and increase military purchases. Negotiators have just suggested that they could buy more than certain agricultural products, such as soy beans.
But Europeans have their limits, and those include bones treated with the United States and chicken breasts washed with acid.
“The EU standards, particularly in what are related to food, health and safety, are sacrosancts, that is not part of the negotiation, and it will never be,” said Olof Gill, spokesman for the European Commission, the EU administrative arm, in a recent press conference. “That is a red line.”
It is not clear how serious are Americans to press for agricultural products such as beef and chicken. But the issue has overcome repeatedly. When US officials filed a commercial agreement with Great Britain on Thursday, for example, beef was part of the agreement.
But according to Britain, the agreement would simply make it cheaper than Americans export more meat without hormones to the country and would not give British health and safety rules, which are similar to those of the EU in the EU in the EU
When it comes to the European Union, the United States can already export a large amount of meat without hormones without facing tariffs, so an agreement equivalent recently to help US farmers.
But diplomats and European officials have repeatedly insisted that there is no room for maneuver to reduce these health and safety standards. And when it comes to commercial restrictions related to meat more widely, there is very little. The chicken, for example, faces relatively high rates, and there is limited appetite to reduce those rates.
This is because Europe protects both its food culture and its farms.
Where the United States tends to have massive agricultural businesses, Europeans have maintained a more solid network or smaller family operations. The 27 nations block has about nine million farms, compared to approximately two million in the United States.
Subsidies and commercial restrictions help keep the agricultural system of Europe intact. The European Union assigns a large part of its budget to support farmers, and a combination of rates and fees limits competition in sensitive areas. EU tariffs on agricultural products are about 11 percent in general, according to the estimates of the World Trade Organization, although they vary greatly according to the product.
And the block could impose higher rates on American agricultural products if trade negotiations fall. Its list of products that could face retaliation levies, published on Thursday, includes beef and pork, along with many soy and bourbon products.
But they are not just tariffs that limit European imports of American foods. Strict health and safety standards also maintain many foreign products from the shelves of European groceries.
Take beef. Mr. Dierendonck and other European farmers are prohibited from using growth stimulants, unlike the United States, where cattle are often raised in large screws with the use of hormones. European security officials have concluded that they cannot rule out the health of humans of beef raised in hormones.
For Mr. Dierenck, the rules also conform to European preferences. The lack of hormones results in a less homogeneous product. “Each terroir has its flavor,” he explains, describing the unique “mouth sensation” of the west flamenco red cow that raises on his farm on the Belgian coast.
But growing beef without hormones is more expense. And US exporters have to adhere to hormonal limitations when they send fillets, hamburgers or dairy products to the EU country, that European farmers argue that it is only fair. Otherwise, imports produced with cheaper methods could get European farmers out of the business.
“We can accept import products that do not meet our production standards,” said Dominique Chargé, a farmer of cattle of western France, who is also president of the Agricole Coopération, French agricultural cooperatives of the National Federation.
The result is that the United States does not sell much meat to Europe. It makes economic sense for American farmers to sell in markets that allow cattle raised in hormones.
A frequent American complaint is that European health standards have more to do with preference than real health.
American scientists have described the risks of using hormones in minimal cows. And they thought that EU officials and consumers frequently make fun of the “chlorinated chickens” of the United States, that shout of meeting is a bit outdated. American farmers have used for years that use an acid similar to vinegar, and not chlorine, to rinse poultry and kill possible pathogens.
Some studies in Europe have suggested that such treatments are not a replacement to raise a chicken in a way that makes it free of pathogens from the beginning. American scientists have concluded that rinses do their job and are not harness for humans.
“I don’t know that this is really about science,” said Dianna Bourassa, a microbiologist specializing in poultry at the University of Auburn. “In my microbiological opinion, there are no health implications.”
From the perspective of European farmers, thought, if health risks are genuine is also the point. While European voters oppose rescue meat treated and hormones treated with hormones, European farmers cannot use agricultural techniques.
“When you talk to our farmers, it is justice,” said Pieter Verhelst, a member of the Executive Board of a Belgian Farmers Union, Boerenbond. “The policy framework we start is totally different, and those problems are mostly out of the hands of farmers.”
And European consumers seem to support the rules of EU food and farmers.
Farmers’ protests last year oppose more than beef imports from South American countries, partly about concerns that cows could be raised with a growth hormone. A commercial agreement of the Obama era died in part thanks to the popular anger about the “chlorine chicken” (“Clorhünchen”, to the German Germans).
EU’s public opinion surveys have suggested that the policies that promote agriculture and farmers are very popular. In a 2020 survey presented in person throughout the block, almost 90 percent of Europeans agreed with the idea that agricultural imports “should only the EU if their production has the EU environmental and animal welfare standards.
In Europe, even in the butcher shop and the farm of Mr. DiRedonck, there is a value in the old way of doing things, political leaders and farmers used. Mr. Dierenck buys some American meat for customers who request it; It is easy to cook, he said it is a small part of the business.
“I really like American flesh, but I don’t like it too much,” said Mr. Dierenck, explaining that to him, beef, his European suppliers provide is varied, like a good wine. “For me, it’s about keeping traditions alive.”
