600,000 EU meat jobs on line in WTO talks

LOWERING import tariffs by 60% will cost up to 600,000 meat jobs if EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson’s WTO offer is accepted, according to the European Meat Platform, a lobby group representing various links in the meat chain.

Farmers, feed manufacturers, traders and slaughterers would all be affected, and the EU Commission had so far failed to win anything in return in the area of services and industrial goods, pointed out the group.

European farmers and meat producers cannot reduce their production costs as much as competitors abroad, who do not have to meet all our high productions standards, said a European Meat Platform spokesman.