Protesting farmers urged Wallonia's legislators to vote against Canada's trade deal with Europe.
Tractors were parked outside the regional legislature in Namur, Belgium, the day the no votes were cast.
Then came Thursday's declaration to save the deal. Again, a nod to the grumpy farmers.
"Safeguards" would be provided, it said, if an as yet undefined "market imbalance" emerged as a result of Canadian imports.
But do Belgium's livestock farmers really have a legitimate beef?
"There's absolutely no way I think that we could ever affect either the price or the quantity over there," said Ron Davidson, the director for international trade, government and media relations at the Canadian Meat Council.
Canadian meat products have been all but shut out of the European marketplace for several decades now, thanks to the common market's strategy of looking after its own.
It's true that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, called CETA for short, secured market access gains for Canadian beef and pork. This win for Canada's export-oriented agriculture sector was heralded as one of the deal's triumphs by the previous Conservative government.
Over six years, Canada's annual quota for beef shipped to Europe will rise gradually from 15,000 tonnes to 65,000 tonnes annually. For pork, the quota rises from 6,000 to 75,000 tonnes, again with a six-year phase-in period.
But annual consumption of beef across the European Union is over seven million tonnes. Canada's new share, eventually, is less than one per cent of that. For pork it's even smaller: less than 0.4 per cent of total European consumption.
"It just doesn't make any sense to me how it could possibly be an issue for the European market," Davidson said.
Additionally — and here's the kicker, as Davidson sees it — European livestock producers who want to export to Canada have tariff-free, quota-free market access from Day 1.
"It's not balanced," he said. "I find it quite amazing that they're complaining about it."
Source : CBC