美国农场协会希望通过TPP实现简化生物安全标准，降低关税以及其他遗留问题
~~US Farm Bureau looks to TPP to streamline biosecurity, cut tariffs and tackle unfinished business from past agreements
Updated Fri at 1:02pm
Lower tariffs and better market access are common goals for farmers in any free trade negotiation.
But the US farm lobby is also looking to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to deliver a streamlined, science-based approach to dealing with biosecurity regulations around the Pacific rim.
The American Farm Bureau says the TPP, currently being negotiated by 12 countries including Australia, Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia, will include a chapter on sanitary and phytosanitary issues.
Those are the regulations that set biosecurity protocols for food imports and exports.
The Farm Bureau's senior congressional relations director in Washington DC, David Salmonsen said sanitary and phytosanitary regulations were too often used as an alternative trade barrier once tariff walls came down.
"So we want a better system there, and a quicker system," he said.
"Our fruit and vegetable people were very concerned that when there's some kind of a tie up at the import level, product can go off quality very quickly while there's a dispute. So we're trying to get a rapid response mechanism to solve small issues and not have everything be a full blown dispute while you're trying to get your imports in."
The TPP hasn't yet been locked down, and it's not clear what any sanitary/phytosanitary chapter may eventually say, but the Farm Bureau believes it'll be less about specifics and more about the approach countries should take to quarantine disputes and issues.
"Not specifically, technically, about this, but an approach where we'll get a quicker mechanism, where the governments could go more of a science-based, risk assessment approach, versus just a 'we don't like it' approach which we think is really unfair and operates as a trade barrier," Mr Salmonsen said.
"There's a chapter in the TPP that's being discussed now just on that subject."
That's something Australian horticultural producers and exporters can relate to all too well.
This year, Vietnam banned the import of all fresh produce from Australia citing concerns about fruit fly. And in recent years, as Asian countries have shifted from unregulated market status to requiring compliance with additional sanitary and phytosanitarty regulations, Australia has also lost markets including Thailand and Taiwan.
On the other hand, Australia's high quarantine standards and slow risk assessment processes have been cited as a problem by other countries, which keen to export their produce here.
But Australia has consistently maintained its approach to biosecurity is science-based, and the Australian Government has said it will not do a deal that compromises the nation's comparatively pest- and disease-free status.
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The USA already has free trade agreements in place with a number of TPP countries, including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Peru and Chile.
Mr Salmonsen says it wasn't until Japan joined negotiations in 2013 that the TPP became a much bigger deal for the US farm sector.
"Even though Japan is already a very good market for us - about $13 billion of all kinds of product - we know that Japan has relied on a lot of high tariffs," he said.
"So the negotiations between the US and Japan are, in a sense, very classical trade negotiations trying to address tariffs.
"Indications are that we're making good progress. Indications are just indications until it's all done, but we think there'll be a significant lowering of their tariff on beef, we think there'll be some improvements on the way they handle pork imports from the US.
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Photo: Australia's economic partnership agreement with Japan provides extra motivation to finalise the TPP, according to the US Farm Bureau. (News Online Brisbane)
"Our rice producers would always like to sell some more rice. Now the Japanese are very sensitive on that, but there is certainly discussion of trying to get a bigger tariff rate quota for our rice exports."
Mr Salmonsen said Japan's economic partnership agreement with Australia - its first with a major agricultural exporter - increased America's desire to close the TPP.
"People can say, 'well, if we don't conclude a deal with Japan, then Australia will have the advantage because their tariffs are going down before ours are'," he said.
"So in that sense, let us say that it's a little motivating."
It's not only in Japan where the US is seeking concessions.
The US, Canada and Mexico signed NAFTA - the North America Free Trade Agreement - in 1993, and a bilateral US-Canada agreement came even earlier, in 1988.
Mr Salmonsen said US agriculture wanted the TPP to resolve some of the sore points that remained.
"Even though we have a free trade agreement with Canada, when that was negotiated dairy and poultry were left out of it," he said.
"Canada strongly protects its supply management program for those product areas, and we'd like to get some more access in there. Those discussions have to continue."
Farm Bureau believes Congress will vote to fast-track approval for TPP
Mr Salmonsen said he believed Trade Promotion Authority would have the numbers in Congress, when it came up for a vote as early as the end of the month.
In the Trade Promotion Authority bill, Congress sets out what it wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership to achieve, and restricts itself to a straight yes or no vote on any deal struck between the US and trade negotiators from 11 other Pacific nations including Australia.
Many observers in Washington DC say it's not yet clear whether Trade Promotion Authority will pass, and there's concern from other Pacific nations that the TPP will stall if it doesn't.
But the US Farm Bureau believes it'll get there.
"We've been working this very hard since the beginning of the year, and this is the time of year when a lot of our farmers from our state farm bureau organisations come to Washington," Mr Salmonsen said.
"They've all been briefed on the issue, they all take it up and meet with their entire state delegation - urban and rural members - and are pushing our message.
"That's as simple as we can make it: support TPA now. We think we need this done, we need the certainty for our negotiating partners to know that our Congress will deal with the trade agreement as it's negotiated to, we hope, come to a conclusion to the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations later this year."
Anna Vidot travelled to America as part of a group of Asia Pacific journalists at the invitation of the US State Department.