In the European Union (EU), there is currently a ban on imports of beef from animals treated with synthetic growth promoters. Norway, as a member of the European Economic Space, follows EU's ban on imports of hormone treated beef. The U.S. has complained to the World Trade Organization (WTO) about this ban. WTO gave EU 15 months to remove the ban unless scientific evidence showing that hormone treated beef is risky to human health was produced. This 15-month period ended in May 1999 without any convincing evidence was produced. However, the ban was not lifted.

Another argument that has been put forward by the EU is that the typical EU consumer wants a ban on hormone treated beef in Europe. This study is about the typical European consumer's willingness to pay for U.S. hormone and non-hormone treated beef. We have used a non-hypothetical Vickrey second-price multi-trial experimental auction market to elicit consumer willingness to pay for four qualities of beef; Norwegian, Irish, U.S. non-hormone, and U.S. hormone treated beef. This procedure was developed to evaluate consumer responses to BST-treated milk (Fox et al.), PST-pork (Buhr et al.), increased food safety (Shin et al.), and attitudes toward various pathogens (Hayes et. al.; Shogren et al.).

The Norwegian Food Control Authority gave us permission to import 70 kilo of U.S. hormone treated beef for our market experiment. We conducted ten auctions with a total of 106 participants recruited from an area 30 km south of Oslo, Norway. The participants where asked to bid for 500 grams of Norwegian, Irish, U.S. non-hormone, and U.S. hormone treated rib eye steak. Our result show that the typical Norwegian consumer’s willingness to pay for 500 grams of U.S. non-hormone treated rib eye steak is $1.1 higher than their willingness to pay for 500 grams of U.S. hormone treated rib eye steak. Their willingness to pay for the Norwegian and Irish rib eye steak is $2.2 and $1.6, respectively, higher than their willingness to pay for the U.S. hormone treated rib eye steak.

Co-author Kyrre Rickertsen