Introduction
Citing public anxieties about the use of hormones in livestock production in the 1980s, the European Union (EU) banned the nontherapeutic use of a number of synthetic and naturally occurring hormones in domestic beef production and subsequently banned imports of beef produced using these productivity-enhancing hormones. The US and other beef-exporting nations such as Canada argued that the import ban was not justified on scientific grounds and was instead disguised protectionism. Thus began a long-running and often acrimonious trade dispute between the EU and the USA along with Canada. The trade dispute highlights the challenges of dealing with consumer suspicions of a technology to all intents and purposes deemed “safe,” the conflict between a precautionary principle approach to technology versus a...
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Hobbs, J.E. (2012). Canada, US-EU Beef Hormone Dispute. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_358-4
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