No problem at all. If other countries’ health and safety standards are stricter than ours and they don’t subsidize, then they get tariff and quota free access to our market. The case for the 37 million or so Canadian consumers of dairy and poultry products is compelling.
But AoD’s comment seems to be directed at the welfare of our supply managed farmers. If our producers want to export to these countries, subsidy-feee please, they can comply with their higher standards. Australia exports a lot of halal-certified lamb to the Middle East without bitching and moaning about how the Arabs should just drop their standards. So there’s a precedent for, you know, one country’s producers complying with another country’s regulations.
On point.
I would add, I'm not clear on where Canada's dairy in health sense would not meet EU standards. We don't all BGH in dairy cattle, we've moved to restrict antibiotic use.
Now, would they accept our butter in terms of quality? No. Because we use lower levels of butter fat, typically 80% vs 82-84% throughout the EU, also we're much less likely to 'culture' our butter, though you certainly can get that here, but that is much more normative in Europe. But that wouldn't be a trade barrier per se, its just that no one would want to eat it! LOL
Our good cheeses are really quite good, but our 'mass market' stuff would not be up to standard in much of Europe.
The trade barrier on cheese that would be injurious to us as is the European insistence on linking product name to place.
So Cheddar is a specific cheese from England, not a general kind of cheese.
We would have to come up with new naming conventions for many products to export into the EU market.
I personally think they over do that sort of thing, its a non-tariff barrier that should be used more sparingly. That said, they aren't going to give it up for Canadian producers.
That being the case, its really important that we begin to do something similar to protect premium products originating in Canada.
While there are fewer, there are some, and we would EU recognition for those.
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