USA Rice Delegation in Brussels for Regulatory Talks

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – This week, a delegation of USA Rice members and staff traveled here for a series of educational meetings around Europe’s regulatory system, focusing primarily on how they set and enforce maximum residue levels (MRLs) for imported and domestically grown food.

The group met with U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service staff based in Brussels, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), Canadian Embassy staff, the Federation of European Rice Millers, CropLife Europe, CropLife International, and the European farmers’ organization, COPA-COGECA.
 
Many discussions revolved around the European agriculture sector’s impression of the Farm to Fork initiative which outlined the European Commission’s goals to curb climate change by taking drastic agronomic steps to meet unrealistic goals by 2030.  After the Russian invasion of Ukraine created Europe’s first food security crisis in decades, many EU-27 member states protested the regulatory ideology in Farm to Fork which led to a number of provisions being walked back.

“U.S. farmers and exporters deserve certainty around the destination’s regulatory system when shipping products abroad,” said Michael Rue, a California rice producer and vice chair of the USA Rice International Trade Policy Committee.  

For example, the EU’s complex system in setting MRLs often seems based more on emotion than science, and has a real impact on U.S. exporters and their ability to reliably supply customers.

“It was refreshing to hear that the European agricultural industry is not standing by and is instead advocating in their member states against some of the EU’s precedent setting policies which further restrict the ability of European farmers to produce a crop,” said Rue.  

The USA Rice delegation also pressed EU officials on the implementation of the U.S. tariff rate quota for milled rice and spent time reiterating the U.S. rice sustainability story.

“Often our longstanding commitment to preserving our land for future generations is not as visible outside our industry as we may think so it’s worth adding to our talking points especially when we’re meeting with folks overseas,” Rue remarked.