Brussels, 02/08/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, Japan triggered an eight-moth "safeguard clause" on the import of European pork. This mechanism (secured during multilateral trade negotiations in the context of of the agricultural agreement of the Uruguay Round) enables a country, should the ceiling for imported products be exceeded (or a fall in prices), to set additional customs duties to limit the entry of the product onto its territory. European meat, including Danish pork, will practically have no access any longer on the market until March 2002. In addition, Danish pork risks swamping the European market in September, unless the European Commission agrees to finance private storage as it did in 1999 (which is not very likely, given the efforts already made to purchase intervention beef).
Japan, the world's leading importer of pork, took this decision because the volume of pork imported from April 2000 to June 2001 (Japanese financial year) exceeded 19% of the average purchase of the previous three years. During these eight months, the "gate price", or minimum entry price, will be increased by 24.6% for cut products. This clause will lead to the Japanese market being almost closed to frozen meat (cheaper). Denmark, which has already exported 94,000 tonnes of frozen pork in the first half of 2001 (194 836 tonnes in 2000), is the European country most concerned Canada and the United States are also affected, as their market share increased earlier this year due to health crises in Europe.