At a Senate hearing into the free trade agreement (FTA), that will be signed on Tuesday by Trade Minister Mark Vaile and his American counterpart Robert Zoellick, industry organisations said the deal had fallen short of expectations and raised new concerns. The deal failed to include more access for Australian sugar farmers to the US market despite earlier government claims it would be un-Australia to leave out sugar.
Copyright protection in Australia will be extended by 20 years to 70 years, while a new committee is to be formed to help overcome quarantine issues.
Queensland Sugar Ltd's Warren Males said Australian farmers had just an 87,000 quota for the nine million tonne American sugar market.
Farmers had hoped to get an increase of 250,000 tonnes which would be large enough to boost prices for Australian farmers.
"That was a level that we believed would certainly add some weight to the prices here," he told the committee.
"When we considered what access we had in previous eras, years gone by, we had had up to 750,000 to 800,000 tonnes at one stage, we believed that it wasn't unreasonable."
Since missing out on increased access, the government has released a $444 million sugar industry rescue package.
Kathleen Plowman from Australian Pork Ltd said the quarantine proposal, on top of subsidies within the American farm sector, meant the FTA could undermine domestic pork producers.
She said it appeared a new quarantine arrangement for imported pork, approved by the nation's quarantine watchdog last week, may have been influenced by the FTA and the government's trade agenda.
"We believe the that the quarantine concessions negotiated in ... the FTA are significant and have serious implications for the Australian pork industry and other food producing industries and we believe that they will inevitably be extended to other countries," she said.
"APL is concerned that these factors combined will contribute to a reduction in Australia's conservative quarantine standards, a potential outcome the Australian pork industry views as particularly troubling."
Australian National University law lecturer Matthew Rimmer said the proposed 20 year copyright extension would have a serious impact on consumers and provide few benefits for creators.
"The copyright term extension will also have a very serious impact on the operation of libraries, cultural institutions and also the creators."
Dr Rimmer said the extended copyright was argued on the basis that it helped creators such as writers and journalists whereas in fact it benefited big corporate holders of copyrights such as Disney.
But Maurice Gonsalves, a lawyer specialising in copyright law, said agreement contained several provisions which would make copyright piracy in Australia tougher.