Farmers to Approach Supreme Court Over India – U.S. Deal on Poultry
Image Source: OpIndia
Farmers and trade organizations have issued a warning as India and the United States resolved to put an end to disagreements regarding the import of poultry goods and to lower import tariffs on apples, almonds, chickpeas, and lentils.
They worry that the new accords, which were signed while delegations from the United States led by President Joe Biden attended the G-20 meetings, will affect poultry farmers’ interests and small and medium-sized enterprises.
There are worries that the agreement would allow for the importation of chicken legs and liver, which are not common in the United States, as well as the usage of meat and bone meal poultry feed, which is a common practice here.
Ranpal Dhanda, the head of the Poultry Federation of India, told The Hindu that his group would appeal the Union Government’s unilateral decision to the Supreme Court. “The interests of the nation’s poultry farmers are at odds with this arrangement. Now, tons of chicken legs will be imported, or more accurately dumped, into our nation. We are also interested in learning if the American authorities will verify that no pig or beef is utilized in the feed for poultry. The eating of beef and pork is a controversial subject in the nation,” he said.
According to Mr. Dhanda, the Center is allowing large American corporations to profit at the expense of the nation’s small and medium-sized chicken businesses. He continued, “They ought to safeguard the local farmers, not the American businesses.”
Both nations have agreed to settle their last unresolved dispute at the World Trade Organization, and India has agreed to lower tariffs on several American goods, including frozen turkey, frozen duck, blueberries, and cranberries (fresh or frozen, dried, or processed). She mentioned that “those tariff cuts will boost monetary possibilities for the United States agricultural manufacturers in a key marketplace and help deliver greater U.S. products to clients in India.”
India has also agreed to lower tariffs on chickpeas, lentils, almonds, walnuts, and apples, according to K.V. Biju, national coordinator of Rashtriya Kisan Mahasnagh. “The Prime Minister and Commerce Minister acquired a letter from the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) asking them to forestall decreasing import duties. We had pleaded with them to raise the import tax. But we anticipated that the administration led by Narendra Modi would give up on farmers’ interests during the G-20 conference,” he remarked.
The removal of import restrictions on apples, almonds, and pulses, Mr. Biju continued, would be detrimental to the interests of farmers in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. “The Center is deceiving other nations who fought with India for the US. subsidies by reversing its earlier WTO stance,” he claimed.
What was the poultry dispute all about?
In 2007, the then-UPA administration in India abruptly banned them out of worry that the Indian poultry sector would perish too soon as the US began exporting and flooding the Indian markets with cheap chicken legs. It was carried out as a preventative measure against the spread of avian influenza under the Indian Livestock Importation Act of 1898. America was prompted by this to summon India to the WTO DSB.
The American poultry business is the world’s largest producer of poultry meat, the second-largest exporter of chicken meat, and a significant producer of eggs, according to the US Department of Agriculture. While smaller than the overall red meat consumption in the US, broilers, other chicken, and turkey are consumed in greater quantities. Nearly 15% of the poultry meat produced in the US in 2022 was exported.
In October 2014, the US successfully resolved the issue at the WTO DSB. The Narendra Modi administration was in power in New Delhi at the time, but when India refused to budge, the United States threatened to put economic sanctions on it.
The Biden administration has repeatedly stated recently that it will not abide by the multilateral organization’s rules for international trade even as it intensifies its trade conflict with China. Trump even made threats to revoke US membership in the WTO in 2018.
Since the commencement of the US-India chicken conflict, trade economist Biswajit Dhar has been tracking it. He said to ABP Live: “By resolving the poultry dispute, we have lost even the final negotiating chip against the US on reinstating the GSP advantages and other trading concerns. In essence, the US wants to export cheaply produced chicken legs to India.
The issues that led to the ban on chicken leg exports from the US still exist, said Dhar, a former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). These worries have not disappeared. Once American exports begin to enter the Indian marketplace, our farmers will suffer. In any case, the agricultural crisis has worsened, and this action weakens one leg.
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