WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/AG/NG/W/19
28 June 2000
(00-2666)
Committee on Agriculture
Special SessionOriginal:  English
EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES PROPOSAL
ANIMAL WELFARE AND TRADE IN AGRICULTURE
Introduction
Animal welfare is an issue of growing importance, notably in the European Community (EC).
The European Commission is currently finalising a Report which analyses the provisions on animal
welfare in non-EC countries which supply the EC  with live animals and animal products. The
information received from non-EC countries demonstrates that animal welfare is not only an “ECconcern”.
There is an increasing awareness among consumers and producers about the effects that
breeding and farming techniques may have on animals, on their health and welfare and, not least, on
the environment. More and more, consumers clai m their right to make informed choice between
products, including products produced to different welfare standards. To enable them to make such a
choice they want to be informed about how farm animals are kept, transported and slaughtered. The
producers, on whom such demands are made, want a stable and coherent basis on which to provide
such information.
The EC has progressively adopted a body of legi slation on the protection of animals, covering
farming, transport, slaughter and experimentation. The EC and its Member States have also played apro-active role in the development of international conventions for the protection of animals (e.g.
during international transport, kept for farming purpos es, for slaughter, for experimental and scientific
purposes).
The objectives of the European Community:
Ensuring that trade does not undermine our efforts in improving the protection of the welfare of
animals:
The EC believes that there are limits to the ways in which it should produce its food. The EC
has established such limits in its legislation, in many cases based on the work of international
conventions such as the Council of Europe. Many other countries have also established legislation in
such areas. But there is a growing concern al ong consumers, producers, as well as welfare
organisations, that while the WTO is working to enhance the framework for the liberalisation of
international trade, which is the primary purpose of the WTO, the WTO does not provide aframework within which to address animal welfare issues. They particularly fear that in the absence of
such a framework, animal welfare standards, notably those concerning farm animal welfare, could be
undermined if there is no way of ensuring that agricultural and food products produced to domestic
animal welfare standards are not simply replaced by imports produced to lower standards.G/AG/NG/W/19
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Different countries have varying cultural and ethical attitudes towards animals, and husbandry
practices. The impact of high animal welfare standards on the relative competitiveness of their
agriculture may be very different.
As a consequence, when a country provides for animal welfare standards that go beyond those
applied by other trading partners, this can have a number of effects. Consumers may not be provided
with coherent information on the welfare standards to which imported products are produced, and
domestic producers may be economically disadvantaged.
This is why the EC believes that there is a genuine need to discuss animal welfare in the
WTO context. The questions are real, whether from consumers or producers, and the WTO, as the
leading international trade organisation, must be ready to address these questions. Given theinterrelationship between animal welfare measures and international trade in agriculture and food
products of animal origin, the EC considers that th is issue must be addressed in the negotiations on
agriculture within the framework of Article 20, while not excluding that animal welfare should be
considered under other aspects of the WTO.
Avoiding trade protectionism:
The objective of the EC in raising animal welfare issues in the context of the WTO
negotiations is not to provide a basis for the introduction of new types of non-tariff barriers.
The European Community has been and is often strongly criticised for referring to animal
welfare. The EC is accused of hidden protectionism, and yet the EC no more applies its domestic
animal welfare rules to imports from other WTO Members than other WTO Members. Where the EC
has openly taken a different stance, is in drawing attention to the need to address the question of
animal welfare within the WTO.
The EC is the world’s second largest exporter of agriculture and food products, and the EC
has no interest in allowing WTO members to adopt unjustified non-trade barriers. Our objective is to
promote high animal welfare standards, to provide clear information to consumers, while at the same
time maintaining the competitiveness of the EC farming sector and food industry.
Some of our competitors argue that the EC is trying to have established in the WTO
provisions that could allow WTO members to refuse imports of animals and animal products from
countries which did not apply the same welfare legislation as they do. Such an approach could end up
dividing the world into different trading blocks, with exporters matching their animal welfare
legislation to that of their principal import markets, and possibly some importers adopting high animal
welfare standards for protectionist reasons. This is not  what we are aiming at, as this would not further
animal welfare.
Equally, the EC does not want to turn back or neglect the need to use trade to improve world
prosperity, in particular the prosperity of the leas t developed countries. The EC is the world’s biggest
importer of agricultural products, from a vast range of countries, including many developing and leastdeveloped countries. We fully recognise the role of trade in helping to raise human living standards in
developing countries. We only want to ensure that the process of liberalising world trade supports
what we are building in the EC about the protection of animals.
In practice, our concerns with animal welfare are most acute in relation to highly-intensive
and industrialised production methods for certain species, in particular poultry and pigs. This type of
production is most often found in developed rather than developing and least developed countries.G/AG/NG/W/19
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Several ways of addressing th e issue in the WTO framework:
The issue of animal welfare is a complex issue, which is at the crossroads of economic,
ethical, animal health, public health, food production and legal issues. It is evident that the importance
attached to animal welfare varies amongst WTO members. Nevertheless, the fact that animal welfareis an emerging trade issue has been recently acknowledged by the OECD, and the international
conventions already in place and ongoing work within the Organisation des Epizooties confirm this.
We fully recognise the complexity of this issue, and the fact that each WTO member has the
right to choose its own animals welfare measures adapted to their own circumstances.  Nevertheless,
the impact of trade liberalisation on animal welfare, in particular the welfare of farm animals and the
transport of live animals, cannot be denied. WTO members should not hamper trade in agriculture andfood products because of animal welfare. But equally, it is important to secure the right of those WTO
members that apply high animal welfare standards to maintain them.
The existing WTO Agreements (Agreement on the application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary
measures, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, and Article XX of GATT, as well asArticle 20 of the Agreement on Agriculture) already provide a basis on which some of the issues
related to animal welfare can be discussed. However, we are of the view that animal welfare should be
globally addressed in a consistent manner within the WTO. The debate in recent times has shown very
clearly the need to establish common ground and understanding on this important issue. That is why
the EC wishes to raise animal welfare as an important non-trade concern in the current negotiations.
There are a number of ways in which animal welfare could be addressed. These are not
mutually exclusive, and an outcome could be envisaged which encompasses a combination of a
number of actions. These include:
• the development of multilateral agreements dealing with the protection of animal welfare. This
approach would be facilitated by the achievement of greater legal clarity on the relationshipbetween WTO rules and trade measures taken pursuant to provisions of multilateral animal
welfare agreements;
• appropriate labelling, compulsory or voluntary, as provided for under Article 2.2 of the TBT
Agreement, could facilitate the wish of consumers to make an informed choice as regards food
products, whether domestically produced or imported, including as regards the production
conditions, e.g. products produced in compliance with certain animal welfare standards;
• high animal welfare standards can increase costs to producers over and above any possible
increased returns from the market. Trade liberalisation can exacerbate this effect and lead to
unequal conditions of competition, and even to drive down welfare standards in exporting
countries. This could fuel opposition to trade liberalisation and the WTO. It may therefore be
necessary to consider whether it would be legitimate to provide for some sort of compensation tocontribute to the additional costs where it can be clearly shown that these additional costs stem
directly from the higher standards in question. For any such compensation to be acceptable, it
would have to have no or at most minimal effects on trade and production.
To conclude, the EC believes that detailed examination of the approaches set out above would allow
WTO members to develop an approach to address adequately the issue of animal welfare within the
WTO, without conflicting with the long-term object ive of trade liberalisation in agricultural and food
products. The EC’s work on animal welfare is continuing, and the EC reserves its right to make
further submissions in the light of developments.
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