The long duel between the United States and the Common Market over chicken tariffs in 1963 had businessmen and government officials on both sides of the Atlantic alternating between lamentation and laughter. The very name given this duel—the chicken war—was ludicrous and the subject of endless jokes and puns. It was regarded with amusement as a petty squabble in a world of much graver problems. But the chicken war produced more anger than fun.

For United States poultry growers, the increased Common Market tariffs on table poultry meant the virtual elimination of their rich export market in West Germany and other European areas. For both Europeans and Americans hoping that liberal trade policies would emerge from tariff negotiations next spring, the war was an ominous portent.

The chicken war began in mid‐1962 when the six member nations of the Common Market—France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg—raised their common outer tariff on poultry to 13.43 cents a pound. In Germany, the biggest market for American chicken exports, the tariff had been 4.8 cents a pound.

The duty is a variable one, intended to serve as a barrier to chicken imports. West Europeans, particularly West Germans, were importing chicken in large quantities from the far more efficient American producers.