Where's the beef?

The United States Trade Representative has issued a new report on trade barriers to US products around the world.

Korea, the seventh largest importer of American goods and services, still has a long way to go before it satisfies Washington, despite WTO-related progress in many areas. No doubt the FTA talks will work on these things.

While the tariffs are a point of contention, some of what the US is considering barriers to trade are simply stricter standards in Korea (!) that are applied across the board, even to Korean products. Here is one example:

In many countries, including the United States, Japan, and the European Union, organic standards are process-based (i.e. agriculture products must be produced and handled in certain ways in order to be certified as organic). As a result, the United States, Japan, the European Union and others have established regulations that allow for trace levels of biotechnology products in certified organic products. The United States will continue to urge KFDA to recognize this system-based approach and to reconsider its zero tolerance policy for presence of biotechnology products in foods that are labeled as organic.

So in order to satisfy the United States, Korea is supposed to "dumb-down" its strict definition of "organic."

I find this "urging" by the United States to be disingenuous. Organic products in particular are valued by the consumer for their wholesomeness, which the KFDA is trying to achieve by its strict definition. A zero tolerance policy in this case is appropriate. Why should it be pressured into accepting a definition of "organic" that allows things that are clearly the antithesis of that label?

Sometimes when I walk through Costco, Carrefour, or the home-grown X-Marts, I notice American products that I know say something like "100% Natural" or "Organic" but which have been taped over. I suspected maybe a difference in legal definitions of these words, assuming from the circumstances that the Korean definition was stricter (it didn't make sense that the Korean side would cover up these words because the food items were too natural or too organic). Now I guess I've found my answer, and I'm a bit disappointed.

In some ways this is reminiscent of American demands that Japan (and Korea, I guess) just suck it up about Mad Cow Disease cases in the United States and import American beef that doesn't meet standards set by Tokyo (or Seoul).

Washington would do better to focus on the parts of unfair trade that truly are unfair, rather than forcing Seoul (or Tokyo) to accept sub-standard standards that their citizens clearly don't want.