Putting an end to a 10-year dispute, the trade of live, raw and processed molluscan shellfish – including oysters, mussels, scallops and clams – can resume between the EU and the United States from the end of this month, the European Commission has confirmed.
The two EU member states of Spain and the Netherlands will be allowed to export such shellfish to the US, while the American states of Massachusetts and Washington can send products to EU markets.
Legislation to this effect was adopted by the Commission on 4 February 2022.
EU Executive Vice-President and Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, welcomed the deal, which resolves a long-standing issue.
“It shows that our efforts to forge a positive, forward-looking trade agenda with the United States are paying off. Since the EU-US summit in June 2021, we have made several breakthroughs: grounding the Airbus-Boeing dispute, launching the Trade and Technology Council and pausing our steel and aluminium trade dispute. All these achievements, plus this latest resumption of trade in bivalve molluscs, help to create sustainable economic growth and jobs for our workers,” Valdis said.
EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides, added, “We are delighted that trustful transatlantic EU-US cooperation is reopening an important trade pathway between the EU and the US on bivalve molluscs. This is good news for food operators and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. Commerce shall resume shortly, and I look forward to the extension of this opportunity to more EU member states in the near future”.
The Commission and the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have been discussing the recognition of each other’s production systems to allow bilateral trade of these products.
Due to differences in regulatory standards, trade in live molluscan shellfish had not been possible between the EU and the US since 2011.
In 2015, both sides carried out on-the-spot audits and, following years of discussions, the Commission and the FDA recommended that the food safety systems for the production of raw bivalve molluscs in the US states of Massachusetts and Washington and the two aforementioned EU member states can be considered equivalent.
The EU therefore added the two US states to the list of third-countries from which bivalve molluscs can be imported into the EU, while the FDA published a notice in the US Federal Register informing the public and stakeholders about the forthcoming opening of the American market to the import of EU bivalve molluscs from Spain and the Netherlands.
Through the arrangement, other EU member states should also be allowed to export these products to the US following a simplified authorisation procedure agreed between EU and US.
The Commission highlighted that this is the first time that FDA has issued an equivalence determination providing EU producers with access to the US market.
