BTW I believe US beef has tended to go for the hamburger end of the market, so I don’t know where all this quality beef comes from. Certainly they are not implementing the tracing systems we have here, so you can trace a piece of meat in the shop back to an individual cow, part of our quality assurance.

On BSE in particular, when they had a single case it struck me as something that doesn’t ring true, because a single case of BSE on a continent is pretty much impossible. There were also obvious problems in the reporting regimes in the US which were pretty much voluntary.

I’m not sure that this was fixed.

I gather that there were good strategic reasons for the Australian decisions, apart from scientific matters, that beef producers might not appreciate.

So there are tangled webs we weave.

The broader point is that the trade rules in food heavily favour the rich countries. At the WTO meeting in Cancun in 2003 the developing countries finally found solidarity and their voice, which is why negotiations ground to a halt.

In general terms small holder farms are not well placed to compete on world markets, but have been ‘opened’ up to subsidised product from rich countries, in part through the WTO but more generally through loan conditionalities imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. In some cases this has literally devastated home industries and wrecked the local markets.

Also as Tudge I think points out, the imposition of industrial farming in a top down fashion as has been the case in India has wrecked local markets without replacing them with the world markets that now bring us 25,000 items in our local supermarket. GM and industrial farming has meant debt and monocultures which has reduced diversity in local diets and increased risk. Farmer suicide has been one byproduct as it usually is with primary industry restructuring everywhere, including Australia.

But these are complex matters which can’t be lightly brushed aside by references to “polemical tracts”.

Gotta go. Seeya tonight.

As my small illustration of where the “bias” lies, I give you a quote from the Chairman of the Australian Beef Association on 21 October, protesting against a slight easing of quarantine rules as they apply to BSE: “Now our industry faces annihilation at the hands of the USA, a country which [is] currently selling beef to their consumers at a much lower price than Australian consumers pay….. we will see top Hotels and Restaurants bringing in US Prime and Choice grade beef. Australia can’t match these cuts.”

Does that sound to you like a man arguing that an import restriction was totally science-based, or a man arguing to maintain an import restriction to subsidise his members and put consumer prices up?

No-one who works in the trade policy area will deny that Australia has about the most restricitve quarantine regime in the world; its impact on keeping prices higher will tehrefore be comparatively greater than those of other countries.

Wozza, I agree with the comment about prices. But Australia has more to protect than other countries in terms of a relatively disease-free environment. Other countries think that because they are kacked up with every disease under the sun, so should we be.

I was agreeably surprised with the recent decision on bananas. The Philippines has threatened to take us to the WTO as has NZ over apples, which they are perfectly entitled to do. But even here there is a bias towards trade, as WTO panels tend to be made up of trade lawyers rather than scientists.

The fact that they are occasionally correct is by chance rather than design.

SG, sort of agree, I’m not suggesting that quarantine is a major influence across the board, but the fact is that (though many people around here prefer not to believe it), trade does lower prices and anything that reduces the potential for trade therefore keeps prices to some degree higher than they need be. No-one who works in the trade policy area will deny that Australia has about the most restricitve quarantine regime in the world; its impact on keeping prices higher will tehrefore be comparatively greater than those of other countries.

BBB

I doubt there’s much evidence that GM would have lowered prices that much, and do we have any evidence that our market share has been affected by not using it?

Not sure that the beef industry’s hands are totally clean either. The Beef Association certainly whinged mightily the other day when an entirely sensible decision about easing BSE-based restrictions was made, and a basis for the whinge was that they had been hiding behind those restrictions to protect themselves from US imports with which they could not compete on price and quality.

I’d throw in a couple of other potential impacts on the level of food prices in Australia vis-à-vis those of many other countries.

One is the triumph of the Luddites in Australia in regard to introduction of GM crops which are widely grown in other countries, and have demonstrated cost (as well as environmental) benefits.

Second is the way Australia barefacedly – and in complete disregard for its legal commitments under the WTO treaty – uses quarantine as a trade barrier, keeping out cheaper imports of food to the benefit of the constituency of the Queensland Agrarian Socialist Party aka the Nats and the detriment of every consumer in the country.

No idea what the total cost impact would be. But I have seen an ABARE estimate of 9-10% cost savings possible on the introduction of GM varieties of broadacre crops like wheat and canola, and FAO figures showing that NZ apples – which the current quarantine ban is largely aimed at – are less than half the cost of Australian apples.

The quotes from Zumbo come from the ABC of course. Given its preference for ideology over accuracy it is hardly surprising it chooses to lay into the evil capitalists. It is far from inconceivable that they have cherry-picked his report to this end.