History Repeating

Originally from: Richard Mawdsley
                        
Introduction Cont'd Food Safety, International Trade, and History Repeated 8 June 2001
Justin Kastner and Doug Powell
The Food Safety Network

This paper was presented in June 2001 at the Joint Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society.

Contemporary international trade disputes over hormone-treated beef, genetically modified foods, and Mad Cow Disease are nothing new. During the nineteenth century, two international trade disputes emerged along lines not unlike those of today. Two of these trade quarrels revolved around animal health and food safety concerns that World Trade Organization (WTO) officials today would term "sanitary trade disputes."

While many of the animal health and food safety concerns that characterized these nineteenth-century transatlantic disputes were in fact legitimate, the concerns were often misrepresented and used as a pretext for protecting agriculture producers. We hear the same allegations in today's international trade spats. Fortunately, we are much better prepared today to evaluate such allegations than we were a century or two ago. While perhaps imperfect, international institutions such as the WTO provide a framework for addressing these issues.
 
TWO NINETEENTH-CENTURY DISPUTES: AN INTRODUCTION

In the 1840’s, several problematic livestock diseases were introduced into Great Britain. Within twenty years, it is estimated that one-quarter of British farm animals were infected with one of these scourges. [1] One of these, pleuro-pneumonia, was later noted by the Veterinarian Inspector to the Privy Council to be “one of the most insidious diseases with which we are acquainted…the cause of greater losses to British stock-owners and dairymen than any other single disease.”[2] In order to minimize the spread of pleuro-pneumonia and other cattle diseases, the British government in 1878 adopted a Foreign Animals Order regulating cattle imports. While several European countries were banned from importing cattle into Britain, others, including the U.S., were exempted and permitted to import live cattle provided that they were inspected at the port; if the port inspector did not detect any signs of pleuro-pneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, or other diseases, the animals were free to enter the British cattle market. However, if diseases were detected, the animals were to be slaughtered immediately.[3] U.S. live cattle imports, while initially granted this conditional exemption, were later, from March 3, 1879, restricted by an immediate-slaughter order.[4] This policy change was made after two significant events: (1) the discovery of pleuro-pneumonia on board a Britain-bound vessel carrying cattle from America[5] and (2) the publication of a Canadian inspector’s report on the presence of pleuro-pneumonia in cattle in Virginia and New York.[6] Both events, widely referred to in the London Times, prompted many to inquire if Britain should continue to import U.S. products.[7] Some public health leaders suggested banning American livestock and meat altogether. Others, including U.S. Secretary of State William M. Evarts, thought it hardly justifiable “to stop so great a trade and to prevent the supply of food from reaching Great Britain on account of a few isolated cases of pleuro-pneumonia.”[8] Many in the British
 government agreed, as U.S. cattle imports offered affordable meat for the British public. The British had actually invested a great deal in the (steamship-mediated) transatlantic cattle and meat trade in order to produce a fall in food prices. [9]

The cattle trade dispute was further complicated by a separate dispute over the safety of U.S. pork. After the discovery of the parasite Trichinella spiralis in U.S. pork imports, many European governments adopted or considered adopting bans on U.S. pork. The general fear of trichinosis (the disease associated with T. spiralis) was a gift to European protectionists. Exclusion based on health protection grounds offered a politically favourable alternative to exclusion based purely on blatant protectionism. [10] As historian John Gignilliat explains, “A government keeping out cheap food would be resented by the poor; a government posing as the protector of its people's health could not be blamed.”[11]

While the British government itself never instituted a permanent ban on U.S. cattle or meat imports, there was in nineteenth-century Britain, as in other European nations, a perpetual tension between providing regulatory measures to guard against disease and doing so simply to buttress domestic cattle and meat prices.[12] This tension and the two trade disputes were resolved when the U.S. government, at the urging of U.S. producers and packers, re-established confidence abroad by creating an animal and meat inspection and certification program.[13]

FAMILIAR FACTORS INFLUENCING DISPUTE RESOLUTION

The nature and resolution of the cattle- and pork-focused disputes were affected by factors familiar to today’s agri-food policy leaders. While a multiplicity of factors may be suggested, three factors—economic considerations, the perception of risk, and regulatory coordination—particularly influenced the two nineteenth-century disputes.

Economic Considerations

In late nineteenth-century Britain, it might be argued that it was the best of times for the country generally but the worst of times for the British agriculture sector. Following the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) and other protectionist tariffs, and particularly after the introduction of cost-effective transatlantic steamship and refrigeration technologies in the 1870s, the domestic British agriculture sector encountered substantial international competition. Foreign suppliers provided stocks of meat at favourable prices, labour and capital previously reserved for British agriculture were released for industrial uses, and rising British wages were increasingly powerful enough to improve diets. [14] Thanks to the increased competition and lower food prices, even the poor were able to alter their diets, consuming increased amounts of meat, milk, and vegetables in addition to bread, potatoes, and beer. [15]

The British government was aware of the importance of international supplies of meat and cattle, particularly from the U.S. In a speech to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, one of Britain’s most popular advocates of free trade, Richard Cobden, informed textile manufacturers, “You get an article even more important than your cotton from America—your food.”[16] The U.S.-to-Britain cattle trade in particular was big business, as evidenced during a Parliamentary hearing. [17]

While Britain in general prospered through cheaper food prices and rising real income, the British agricultural economy experienced depression. [18] International competition forced many producers to sell their farms, and many landowners sold their landed assets and re-invested them in industrial projects.
 
Late nineteenth-century Britain’s love affair with cheap food prices, combined with its desire to use capital and labour for industrial ventures, did not bode well for the British farmer. Not surprisingly, the British farmer and some in the government longing for protection for agricultural producers were interested in looming concerns over the safety of U.S. cattle and meat products. As we have already seen John Gignilliat explain, banning cheaper cattle and meat imports on health grounds offered a convenient way to help domestic producers. Economic considerations played a key, tension-filled, role in the resolution of the U.S.-British trade dispute. There were different stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, consumers, and producers) and they were all affected, often differently, by the economic landscape of the day. Meanwhile, competing theories within the government regarding regulation and trade contributed to the tension of the dispute.

Historian Harold Perkin does an admirable job following the development of the British government’s economic thinking during the nineteenth century. Progressing from practically uninhibited laissez-faire ideology to a stronger belief in governmental-intervention, Perkin demonstrates that the British Government’s policies evolved. [19] For example, Perkin draws a parallel between the thinking of John Stuart Mill, one of the premier nineteenth-century economists in Britain, and the governments’ changing views towards economic theory. Perkin notes, “The new economists [by 1880] certainly were opposed to an unqualified laissez-faire, and had learned from Mill a new empiricism towards State intervention.”[20] The evolution from unbridled free-trade to greater-or-lesser degrees of governmental intervention greatly affected the dispute. Was Britain to continue to blindly accept U.S. cattle and meat products because laissez-faire economic theory demanded it? Or was Britain to find an acceptable degree of governmental intervention, particularly in an area of public health protection? There certainly were tensions in these areas. Compare the following two viewpoints, the first by a leading economist of the day, the second by a government veterinary inspector: “…although some people have expressed alarm at this growth [of increased reliance on food imports] it is really one of the most satisfactory features of our trade. It not only gives evidence of a greatly increased well-being amongst the masses of the people, but it shows that Free-trade, by opening up to us the whole world as a source of food supply, has enabled us to satisfy our wants much more cheaply by purchasing abroad the needed supplies than we could by producing them at home. There has thus been an enormous saving in expenditure, and capital and labour have been diverted into other channels, where they have found more profitable employment.”[21]

“One great bugbear to the adoption of adequate legislative measures has been the cry of what will the trade, what will the public say? And further, the fear of interfering with the rights of the public has been used against the adoption of proper and stringent suppressive measures. In this matter, I maintain that the trade requires to be saved from, and in spite of, itself. The weal of the many should not be sacrificed to the gain of the few; and although the trade would be temporarily embarrassed by the adoption of stringent repressive measures, it would in the end, by the greater freedom which could be given to the movement of animals, and by the removal of a tangible cause of dread from the minds of Purchasers, be the gainer.”[22]

The latter quotation indicates the interplay of economic considerations and yet another factor: the public health risks posed by U.S. cattle and meat imports.
 
Perception of Risk
A second factor influenced the resolution of the disputes. In the literature of the day, free-trade viewpoints were resisted on public health grounds. In Dr. John Gamgee’s report on diseased meat, the Plymouth and Devonport Journal is quoted: “Mr Gamgee has demonstrated beyond doubt, that in this country, and especially in London, an immense quantity of meat is annually slaughtered, which is utterly unfit for human food, but which, nevertheless, is sold to the public; that our institutions are most defective, and our laws totally insufficient to deal with the evil.”[23]

This snapshot of the British public’s food safety views indicates that there were indeed public concerns about the risks posed by diseased meat and cattle. Veterinary concerns about the cattle plagues of the 1860’s confirm this.[24] Historians Richard Perren and Abigail Woods address the issue of scientific understanding of the risks, including the views of veterinarians involved in the meat trade.[25] Economists, too, were concerned, although at times they expressed worry that the government inconsistently treated the risks posed by foreign versus domestic cattle.[26] Regarding the pork dispute and the risks posed by the trichina parasite, the public’s perceptions contributed significantly to the dispute. In 1881, during the transatlantic debate over the safety of U.S. pork, the British consul in Philadelphia, George Crump, composed a report that served to complicate the entire pork controversy. His report, widely published in the Times, stated:

“From a sanitary point of view it may not be impertinent to call your lordship's attention to the immense mortality among swine by a disease known as “hog cholera,” of which 700,000 head have died this year in Illinois. Immense quantities of pork are annually shipped to the United Kingdom, and as the disease, “trichina spiralis,” seems to be on the increase in this country, the subject is not unworthy of attention.”[27]

Crump went on to describe in gruesome detail an alleged case of trichinosis reported, in Kansas: “Trichinae were found; worms were in his flesh by the million, being scraped and squeezed from the pores of the skin. They are felt creeping through his flesh and are literally eating up his substance. The disease is thought to have been contracted by eating sausages.”[28]

The report became public shortly before President Garfield entered the White House. The outgoing and incoming Secretaries of State, William M. Evarts and James G. Blaine, respectively, insisted that the Crump report’s claims were false. Secretary Blaine wrote to the British Minister in Washington:

“Had it been Mr. Crump's specific purpose to cause a panic among British consumers, he could hardly have framed his report more appropriately.”[29] The Crump report confounded the trade dispute by implying a link between trichinosis and hog cholera, an entirely unrelated disease. Furthermore, the gruesome case of trichinosis in Kansas was never confirmed. Regardless of its errors, Gignilliat notes that Crump’s report gave the enemies of American pork a valuable tool. [30] By igniting public concerns about the risks of U.S. pork, the resolution of the dispute was delayed for several years.
 
Regulatory Coordination
It has been mentioned that the U.S. meat industry, eager to win the favour of European markets, lobbied the U.S. government to institute a credible inspection and certification system. Indeed, it appears that the U.S. government was deliberate after 1884 to harmonize its inspection policies with those of Britain. This effort proved invaluable for the resolution of the two trade disputes. On March 3, 1891, the U.S. Congress passed a new law providing the Department of Agriculture the necessary power and budgetary authority to inspect and certify (to indicate satisfactory health) U.S. animals and meat prior to exportation.[31] Six months later, an article appeared in the Times noting that the new U.S. regulations were “for the same purposes” as new British regulations.[32] Interestingly, the language of the British and American regulations is strikingly similar not only in purpose, but also in terminology used.[33]

It seems that U.S. and British governmental officials actually worked together to sort out the trade disputes—even to the point of using each others’ regulatory language.[34] If U.S. and British officials did in fact work together or “copy” each other’s regulatory provisions, it would not be surprising. In his thesis, Craig Robert Stuart notes that nineteenth-century Canadian food regulations were largely drawn up along British regulatory models.[35] Of course, it would be foolish to assume that the U.S. copied Great Britain as Canada (a Dominion of Great Britain) did. Nevertheless, evidence of one nation (Canada) copying another (Britain), coupled with the exploratory evidence cited above, lends credibility to the notion that the U.S. examined British models while drafting its own initial animal health and food safety regulations. Moreover, at the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S. and Great Britain were enjoying a remarkable rapprochement and had already accumulated much experience working together to resolve other transatlantic disputes. [36]
 
HISTORY REPEATED AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
The two nineteenth-century, transatlantic disputes indicate that three factors—economic considerations, risk perception, and regulatory coordination—influenced dispute resolution. In today’s international trade disputes over food safety, these three factors continue to have influence. Three examples demonstrate this. Those familiar with the hormone-treated beef dispute are aware of the accusation that the European Union’s motivation for keeping out North American beef is partially economic rather than completely health-related. Regarding GM food, many have argued that the public’s perception of risk contributes to trade tensions. Finally, international trade officials continue to stress the value of bi-lateral and multi-lateral regulatory coordination as a way to prevent trade disputes.

In an effort to address the first two factors influencing dispute resolution (economic considerations and perceptions of risk), over 100 national governments signed during the Uruguay Round an agreement that (1) recognizes their right to adopt controls to protect public health but also (2) ensures that such controls do not represent arbitrary, discriminatory, or scientifically unjustifiable restrictions on international trade.[37] By requiring scientific justification for health-related trade barriers, this pact, the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement), unmasks hidden economic motivations and risk-perception biases. The SPS Agreement is enforced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which each signatory government is a member. The WTO delivers judgment in disputes related to the SPS Agreement, and it requires members who violate the Agreement to modify or withdraw their non-compliant sanitary (human or animal health) or phytosanitary (plant health) regulations. While the WTO is unable to force a member government to change its measures, it can authorize those countries adversely affected to retaliate. [38] In such cases, the WTO permits the aggrieved member to suspend trade concessions to the violating country, typically by raising tariff rates on the country’s exports.

In recognition of the importance of the third factor influencing dispute resolution (regulatory coordination), the authors of the SPS Agreement emphasize that the preferred method for resolving problems, including food safety related trade disputes, is for the countries concerned to discuss and settle the matters themselves.[39] Furthermore, with a view to promote the harmonization of food safety standards, the SPS Agreement specifically mentions and the WTO specifically acknowledges three science-based, standard-setting bodies.[40] The SPS Agreement also requires countries to notify each other of proposed food safety related trade restrictions.[41] This latter provision promotes transparency and may help facilitate regulatory coordination. It should be emphasized that the WTO and the SPS Agreement seek to address or accommodate three factors that have, throughout history, influenced food safety related trade disputes. While imperfect and often the recipient of much criticism, the WTO and the authors of the SPS Agreement should be applauded for their efforts to deal with age-old factors that affect the resolution of disputes.