Food Safety Standards and the TTIP

Recent criticisms of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) regulatory cooperation initiative identify what critics believe to be many errors on both sides of the Atlantic with respect to food safety issues. Such divergences suggest that neither side is necessarily more cautious or less stringent than the other, and that differences in treatment reflect diverging regulatory standards rather than food safety risks. In each instance, one party permits domestically that which the other party prohibits from importation. For example, both the Center for Food Safety and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy report that the U.S. permits the treatment of poultry with chlorine. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) reports that chlorine-rinsed chicken is banned by the European Union. On the other hand, the CFS reports that the U.S. has a “zero-tolerance” policy for e. coli in cheese, while Europeans do not. While these are not the most controversial of the U.S.- EU food safety disagreements, assuming that objective, science-based food safety standards could be established for each of these types of products, there are unknown combinations of type 1 and type 2 errors across the Atlantic, in which one party erroneously treats safe products as unsafe or treats unsafe products as safe. Rather than allow these errors to stand, which potentially expose some to food safety risks and deprive others of trade benefits, a likely outcome of progress in regulatory convergence is a reduction of these errors, increased trade and a basis for agreement on risks. The critics, on the other hand, would support each of these competing barriers to trade, without regard to the harms to domestic health these food safety risks purportedly represent. “Harmonization”, in contrast, could result in the reduction of these errors and further contribute to the sharing of scientific findings in a cooperative manner for the purpose of establishing scientifically supportable food safety standards.