Study On The Effect Of The Animal Epidemic Diseases Control Measures Linked To The Internatioal Meat Trade

The international meat trade develops energetically when the current trend of economic globalization continues to strengthen. The world meat trade becomes more and more important to the relevant producers and the consumers. On the one hand, producers from leading export counties are more and more rely on the meat exportation. On the other hand, the consumers in import countries are also depend on the imported meat product to meet their consumption demand.However, various animal diseases were epidemic all over the word when the international meat trade developed energetically over the past decade. The foot and mouth disease (FMD), highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), mad cow disease (BSE) and many other kinds of animal diseases occurred in pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens and other livestock which are for human's consumption. The characteristics of these diseases are outbreak suddenly, infectious, unpredictable, transmission with the international meat trade, even some kinds of diseases can spread to human.The animal epidemic diseases bring negative impacts to the international meat trade. On the one hand, animal diseases outbreak will significantly reduces the output of the meat products and make the quality worse. And also it hit the domestic producers hard and even become a major challenge to animal husbandry industry and related industries. On the other hand, in order to prevent the animal epidemic disease spreading to their countries and to protect their people and animals, import countries often take a very severe and unusual disease control measures, which could lead to suspension or interruption of the related product trading, hindering meat product trading strongly.In particular, most countries especially some developed counties are pursuing the policy of 'zero risk' to avoid animal epidemic disease, and they cease the import of meat product or even the whole animal product from those disease-outbreak countries immediately. During the implementation of import prohibition, in order to protect their own livestock industry, some countries will take advantage of this opportunity and use excuses such as protecting the health of their people, public safety, animal welfare, environment protection and so on. Meantime, they often issue a series of very strict technical standards and technical regulations on animal epidemic, implement harsh quality certification system and procedure of inspection and quarantine, expend standard control range, and use very intricate system for export enterprises to register or to get the permission. All of these methods become technical barriers to meat trade and make export of related meat product hard for those disease-outbreak countries.This paper analyzes the animal epidemic disease management status of international organizations, major developed countries and China. It uses international trade theory to find the mechanism of control measures of the animal epidemic diseases which affect international meat trade. From the perspective of trade economic, it analyzes the microeconomic impact and macroeconomic impact of animal epidemic diseases control measures. If selects the highly pathogenic avian influenza as an example to do the empirical analysis. Through the analysis, we know how the animal epidemic disease control measures barriers form. At last, it puts forward some useful suggestions for our country to copy with the animal epidemic diseases' barriers.