What’s At Steak in the Euro-American Trade War by Ian Cooper

 

Whenever a quarrel erupts between the U.S. and another country, it inevitably creates a furore in the other country – with extended rants against American imperialism – but often passes with no media attention whatsoever in the U.S. itself. Americans may therefore be forgiven for being blissfully unaware that they are now in a full-blown trade war with the European Union.

Last week, in a little town in France, 150 farmers occupied a McDonald’s restaurant. I kid you not. They were protesting against the retaliatory tariffs newly imposed by the U.S. (along with Canada, alas) on some European luxury products such as foie gras, Roquefort cheese and Dijon mustard. The farmers put up posters that said, “No hormones in foie gras country.”

Without going into the – very complex – details, there are, in fact, four separate and ongoing disputes, concerning four products the Americans are selling which the Europeans don’t want to buy: hormone-treated beef (the cause of the present spat), genetically modified foods, dairy hormones, and bananas. Apparently, it is a top priority for this U.S. government to make the world sale for… drugged-up cows.

The interesting thing to me is that three of these disputes arise from a European distrust of American high-tech food; collectively they illustrate some important differences in gastronomic attitudes on either side of the Atlantic. (I cannot, however, find any deep cultural meaning in the dispute over bananas.) To defend their resistance, the Europeans cite three high-minded concerns: public health, animal welfare, and the environment. In response, the Americans assert that high-tech food is not only safe but in fact a great boon to mankind; they accuse Europe of thinly disguised protectionism.

For the record, it is my opinion that the Europeans’ stated concerns have merit; these foods have not been proven to be safe. (It should be noted also that the Europeans do not exactly have a perfect public health record, having had a number of food scares recently.) But I think that the real reason behind the European intransigence is not as high-minded as they would have us believe; on the other hand, it is not mere protectionism.

The fact is, Europeans are snobs about food. And they feel particularly superior to Americans, whom they believe to be about as discriminating as three-year-odds when it comes to what they put in their mouths. The European attitude of culinary superiority translates into a general conservatism about farming methods, and an inherent distrust of anything new-fangled, especially from the U.S.

One can’t help but suspect that the trans-Atlantic rift is more about culture than about agriculture. Europeans reject hormonally enhanced American beef not because they think it is hazardous or morally wrong but because it is tasteless. It is essentially the same reason that they reject, say, tasteless Hollywood movies with hormonally enhanced stars.

If you want proof that any European animal-welfare argument is disingenuous, then look at foie gras, one of the targets of the new American tariffs. It is a pate of goose liver, involving the “traditional” method of force-feeding the unfortunate creature until its liver balloons to many times its normal size. (Delicious, by the way; try it on toast.)

Put simply, Europeans resist pumping their cattle with hormones not because they want to make Elsie’s time on earth that much more pleasant, but because they love a good steak.

Americans do love a good steak as well; but they don’t seem to mind their steak from a pumped-up Nietzchean Supercow, or their milk from a Frankenstein Holstein, or their tomatoes from a genetic laboratory. For some reason – lack of information, lack of choice, or both – Americans have a much higher tolerance for food that has been pesticized, hybridized, genetically modified, and hormonally enhanced to the point of tastelessness.

(I exaggerate, of course. There is one group of American consumers who are very well informed about farming methods, and care deeply about the way livestock are treated. They’re called Vegetarians. Unfortunately, they are the one group, which has no leverage with beef producers.)

American attitudes may yet be changing. A growing market in organic milk (free of hormones, pesticides and antibiotics) is one indication that Americans are questioning the dubious products which agribusiness shoves down their throats.

But for now, let’s have three cheers for the European Union. Their finicky feelings about food at least provide one effective defense against the relentless juggernaut of bioengineering. I hope they keep up the fight, even if it means I have to pay a little more for fancy mustard in the meantime.