FOOD TRADE ASSOCIATIONS

FOOD TRADE ASSOCIATIONS. Since the time of the first Crusade (1095–1099), early food trade companies shipped raw specialty commodities (primarily spices) from exotic lands, first from Egypt and Syria, and later from China, India, and Indonesia, to market ports in the colonial world. The Italian trade families of Venice and Genoa were particularly active, most notably the Polo family, which brought goods from China between 1260 and 1294. Perhaps the most important of these shipments were seed stuffs, which were conveyed great distances, then planted on domestic soils and genetically groomed to flourish in their new habitats, to eventually become some of the staple commodity crops—such as maize and wheat—of human history. Bartering goods in both directions, the early trading companies contributed to the wealth of their risk-taking owners and sponsors who paid for their explorations.

The successful trade of even nonessentials developed dependencies on imported goods; tea and coffee, for instance, became so prized that their trade was eventually manipulated for political purposes. Frequently subsidized by royalty, food trade companies easily became players in the political arena. The East India Tea Company, which still exists today, was the beneficiary of tea taxes that Great Britain placed on its colonies in the early 1770s. When the practical Americans started drinking Dutch teas instead, the British placed tariffs on the Dutch teas, favoring their own trade association products at lower prices. That move was the impetus for the famed Boston Tea Party of 1773. After that, coffee rose quickly into American favor, having been introduced in 1600 to the West by Italian traders. So popular was the brew in the early 1960s that the coffee-producing and -consuming nations agreed to use export quotas to provide reasonable market prices and stabilize supplies. When that agreement was not renewed in 1989, the producers formed the Association of Coffee Producing Nations and developed the Coffee Retention Plan to balance supply and demand. Food trade associations had come of age and became a driving force in the global political arena.

Contemporary food trade associations may represent a commodity grower group, such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and National Corn Growers' Association in the United States; the Asociacion de Exportadores de Chile (Association of Chilean Exporters, or ASOEX, fruit exporters); or the Association of British Salted Fish Curers and Exporters, and the Pea Pickers and Pea Packers, in the United Kingdom. Or they can represent a group of commodities and products that share a trading platform or set of technologies, such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), American Frozen Food Institute, Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the National Food Processors Association (NFPA) in the United States; or the Camara Nacional de Agricultura y Industria (National Chamber of Commerce for Agriculture and Industry) in Costa Rica.

These associations no longer physically trade food goods, but deal with a variety of issues that cannot be handled at the level of the food producers or processors individually, including coordination and collaboration in the marketplace on food safety, workers' rights, and agricultural health; public communication and education; distribution, pricing and marketing strategies; technical services; crisis management; and legal representation and lobbying in the international trade policy arena. Members (producers or processors), not owners or sponsors, reap the benefits of their efforts. Nowhere is this more apparent than in high-visibility marketing campaigns that have emerged for small-commodity products like raisins ("I heard it on the grapevine") and milk ("Got milk?").

Trade associations can be vitally important in legally defending an industry when it is involved in a trade dispute, for instance when it is charged with "dumping," as in the case of Chilean salmon defended in Asociacion de Productores de Salmon y Trucha AG (Association of Salmon and Trout Producers) v. the United States International Trade Commission (2 July 1999), where tariff penalties were greatly minimized. Mexico's Asociacion Agricola Local de Productores de Uva de Mesa (AALPUM) and Chile's ASOEX successfully cleared their table grape growers of dumping complaints by the Desert Grape Growers League of California in the spring of 2001. Court and lobbying fees in international trade disputes can mount into the millions, far beyond the capacity of individual producers in developing countries where government support for the industry is nonexistent.

Trade associations can wield enough power to countermand multilateral international treaties. The World Trade Organization was established 1 January 1995 out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of the Uruguay Round to adjudicate trade disputes according to a scientific risk-based assessment. Now, many food trade associations, like the science-based NFPA and the GMA, participate actively in that process, supplying regulatory and scientific experts to the WTO Codex Alimentarius Committees to prevent the formation of future technical barriers to trade.

See also Civilization and Food ; Codex Alimentarius ; Commodity Price Supports ; FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) ; Government Agencies ; Government Agencies, U.S. ; International Agencies ; Maize .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alden, John R. A History of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1969. Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1989.

Barty-King, Hugh. Food for Man and Beast: The Story of the London Corn Trade Association, the London Cattle Food Trade Association and the Grain and Feed Trade Association, 1878–1978. London: Hutchinson, 1978.

Grocery Manufacturers of America. Available at www.gmabrands.com.

National Food Processors Association. Available at www.nfpa-food.org.

Robin Yeaton Woo