EU marketplace may reopen to US poultry this fall.

BYLINE: Peter T. Leach

The huge European Union market for U.S. poultry products may open up by this fall after an 11-year ban that has closed off a market of 496 million consumers in 27 countries.

Brussels has banned imports of fresh and frozen U.S. chicken and turkey meat since 1997 on the grounds that the chlorinated water U.S. producers use as an anti-microbial agent to wash the meat is potentially carcinogenic. In the years since then, U.S. producers have proposed using four other anti-microbial agents, but in every case, EU regulators have opposed the alternatives on grounds they won't eliminate all pathogens, such as salmonella.

Following a meeting with U.S. …