European Vs Indian Farmers

Genuine health concerns are legitimate and should be shared by the Indian authorities also for the safety of their own domestic consumers. But the latest EU move has the potential of opening up a can of disputes as it smacks of considerations other than just hygiene. European protection of the interests of their farmers is historic and this can have well played a part in the latest moves on dairy exports to Europe. The new norms are part of a unilaterally drafted code and are yet to be recognised under the agreement for sanitary and phytosanitary measures of the World Trade Organisation. In particular, imposing them according to such a rigid time frame makes the move quite questionable.

 

Among other stipulations, the EU directive states that animals should be reared on farms, milked by machines and be under the care of a government veterinary doctor. This is nothing short of utopian for India and other third world countries where dairying is essentially a subsidiary occupation of landless peasants and small and marginal farmers owning one or two animals. Although commercial dairy farms are now coming up, the bulk of the milk is produced in the unorganised sector by individual households. The Operation Flood programme, which has won acclaim the world over as a successful model of dairy development in the developing countries, relies entirely on the milk produced by individual members of rural dairy cooperatives.

The EUs norms make sense in the case of products manufactured directly from raw milk without any heat treatment. These need not apply to the products prepared from pasteurised milk which is recognised by all as absolutely safe for humans. There is every possibility of the EUs norms being struck down by the WTO for two reasons. Firstly, these are far in excess of the recommendations formulated under the International Animal Health Code of the Paris-based Office International Epizootics, an equivalent of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in the livestock sector. Secondly, the new norms are blatantly discriminatory against the systems of milk production prevalent in almost the entire third world. There is, therefore, a case for the developing countries to unitedly seek recognition of the hygiene norms laid down by the OIE, and not the EU, as the official WTO code for international trade in milk products.