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WTO Ruling Backs Biotech Crops    [

    GM Food Must Be Allowed into Europe, WTO Rules
    By Stephen Castle
    The Independent UK

    Wednesday 08 February 2006

    Brussels - Europe faces new pressure to open its markets to genetically-modified food from the US after the World Trade Organisation ruled that the EU broke international rules with its moratorium on new licences.

    A lengthy and complex preliminary ruling from the WTO said that a de facto Europe-wide ban, which prevented new corn, cotton and soybean products from entering the European market, was not based on scientific concerns.

    American sources also said that the WTO had found that six individual states - France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Luxembourg and Greece - broke the rules by applying their own bans on marketing and importing GMOs.

    The row over GMOs has exacerbated transatlantic tensions over trade. In most European countries there is acute suspicion of GM technology which is widely accepted by North Americans. Corn and soybeans that have been genetically modified to resist insects or disease have been widely grown in the US for years.

    The case refers to the period between 1998 and 2004 when a group of EU member states blocked all new approvals until a new system was in place which would boost traceability and labelling of GM products.

    Though that ban has now been lifted, US producers are still frustrated at the pace of the approval procedures in Europe. Moreover they also believe that, by taking the EU to the WTO, they will deter non-European countries from blocking GM products.

    Last night the European Commission refused to comment on the findings which have yet to be made public formally. However the EU is likely to dispute the WTO's preliminary ruling, arguing that the moratorium is now over, and pointing to the fact that 30 GMOs or derived food and feed products have been approved for marketing in the EU. If the preliminary findings are backed up in the WTO's final report, due in several months, the EU is entitled to appeal.

    The US, Canada and Argentina brought the WTO complaint against the EU, in May 2003, arguing that the moratorium was about protectionism, not science. The three countries say there is no scientific evidence for the EU action, which was an unfair barrier to producers of biotech foods wanting to do business in Europe.

    The EU said it needed the block to allow it to gather biotech data and find out how best to update GMO rules. It argues that, while GMOs are not inherently unsafe, a case-by-case assessment of environmental, human and animal health needs to be made.

    Two years ago the moratorium was lifted and a modified strain of sweetcorn, grown mainly in the US, was allowed on to the market. But Washington continued with the case because it wanted to be sure approvals for GMO sales were being decided on scientific rather than political grounds.

    Last night's ruling was greeted with relief by US farmers.

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    WTO Ruling Backs Biotech Crops
    By Justin Gillis and Paul Blustein
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 08 February 2006

European ban, challenged by US and allies, violates trade regulations, panel says.

    The World Trade Organization ruled yesterday that a six-year European ban on genetically engineered crops violates international trade rules, according to US sources familiar with the ruling.

    The widely expected ruling, though it will not be final until later this year, appeared to be a symbolic victory for farmers and agricultural companies in the United States, Canada and Argentina. The three countries had challenged Europe's anti-biotechnology stance in the world trade body in Geneva.

    The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the finding is preliminary and confidential, said a panel at the trade body issued its decision late yesterday, ruling in favor of the three countries on a large majority of the 25 crops under dispute in the case while issuing mixed rulings on a few crops. The panel also ruled in favor of the three countries in challenging national bans on specific biotech crops issued by Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg.

    The ruling was welcomed by pro-biotechnology groups in the United States, which had urged the Bush administration to file the case in 2003. Farm groups and biotech advocates are hoping the ruling will soften European resistance to the crops and, even more important to them, slow the spread of anti-biotech sentiment around the world.

    "The decision was never really in doubt, but its global impact could be huge," Gregory Conko, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, said in a written statement. "With the voice of the world community now clearly on the record, we hope the Europeans will quickly dismantle their bans and let science-based policy and consumer freedom prevail."

    How much practical effect the trade ruling will have remains to be seen, though, as resistance to gene-altered crops remains high among European consumers. Most European grocery chains refuse to stock products made with genetically engineered ingredients. If European manufacturers did produce foods with such ingredients, they would have to be specially labeled, a policy that the United States condemns but hasn't yet challenged in the trade body.

    Past US attempts to push biotech crops have provoked intense backlash by European consumers, and some anti-biotech groups predicted that the same thing would happen again as they assailed yesterday's ruling and the trade case that led to it. Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch in Washington, part of a network of consumer groups founded by Ralph Nader, denounced the WTO panel's application of "retrograde rules" in an attempt "to force Frankenfoods on the rest of the world regardless of what consumers and their elected representatives say."

    Biotech crops first came to market in the United States in the mid-1990s. The large majority of those developed so far have been commercial failures, but a few developed by Monsanto Co., Syngenta AG and other big agricultural firms have been runaway successes. They include gene-altered varieties of corn, soybeans, cotton and canola. Genes from other species have been inserted into these crops to allow them to better resist weeds and insects. Some of the crops, notably cotton, require substantially less chemical treatment and are seen by their backers as having environmental benefits.

    An overwhelming body of scientific opinion - including regulators at the European Food Safety Authority and scientific institutes in most European countries - holds that the crops are safe to eat and pose only minor environmental risks. But European consumers were burned by food-safety scandals in the 1990s involving dioxin-laced chickens, beef capable of causing a fatal brain disease, and other disasters in which they were initially assured that the foods were safe. Their trust in the opinion of European, much less American, scientists on such matters is low.

    Controversy over the US-led movement toward planting biotech crops exploded in Europe in 1998. Several crops had been approved by then and the United States still sells tons of such crops to Europe every year, but the European Union stalled new approvals for six years, from 1998 to 2004. Six countries issued national bans even on crops that had already received Europe-wide approval.

    It was those actions that the United States and its allies challenged, citing WTO rules that say new products must be considered expeditiously and can be banned only on sound scientific grounds.

    European regulators contend that even if the rules the United States challenged amounted to an illegal moratorium, the European ban was effectively lifted by a stringent new regulatory framework that took effect in 2004. The trade panel "has recognized that the alleged moratorium has ceased to exist," a European Commission official said last night. "Our sense is, it's a mixed bag. In some respects, the panel is upholding our positions."

    The United States acknowledges that Europe, under the 2004 rules, appears to have lifted its moratorium, at least technically, and is now moving forward in considering biotech crops. But the United States contends that the process is still too slow and the regulatory standards are unreasonable given that the crops, which Europeans refer to as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, pose few risks.

    "The US appears not to like the EU authorization regime, which it considers to be too stringent, simply because it takes longer to approve a GMO in Europe than in the US." the European Union said in a briefing document. "The US appears to believe that GMOs that are considered to be safe in the US should be de facto deemed to be safe for the rest of the world."

    In practice, Spain is the only European country growing any significant amounts of biotech crops. Virtually no foods containing such ingredients appear on European grocery shelves, and some applications to allow such crops have been pending in Europe for a decade.

    "When you have products that are still languishing from the mid-1990s, obviously we think there's a problem that has to be addressed," a US trade official said late yesterday.