The National Milk Producers Federation board voted to support the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact “containing features that will help America’s dairy farmers in the future. The organization is now urging Congress to pass the agreement this year, even as it also registered concerns with another major trade pact being negotiated with Europe,” said an NMPF statement.
NMPF was one of the last large farm groups to take a position on TPP. Its decision could add impetus to the free-trade agreement which covers 40 percent of the world economy. Due to ratification rules, TPP cannot take effect unless Japan and the United States vote to be members. Most U.S. farm groups support TPP. Rural lawmakers, often Republicans, are expected to be key in the TPP vote because urban Democrats say TPP is weak on labor and environmental rules.
Jim Mulhern, NMPF chief executive, said overall, TPP will benefit U.S. dairy producers with provisions that knock down trade barriers such as unfair safety rules and restrictions on commonly used names, such as parmesan, as a hard, dry cheese made from skim milk. Exports to Japan and Canada will not be as large as NMPF wanted but TPP also controls access to U.S. markets.
“In light of Europe’s continued refusal to remove barriers to U.S. dairy exports,” the NMPF board said it opposed advancement of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership unless there is progress on dairy provision. “We remain extremely concerned,” Mulhern said, with the EU insistence on exclusive use of so-called geographic indicators for products that have a historic tie to a specific region. U.S. producers say some of the names such as parmesan are a widely understood descriptive term for a product, not a claim to be a product of a region in northern Italy.
U.S. and EU negotiators have discussed the issue of geographic indicators for years without resolution.