Canada won’t get everything it wants in negotiations for an international set of rules for imports and exports of products developed through biotechnology.
But as long as the biosafety protocol is negotiated in good faith, Canada is probably going to have to sign the international agreement, says Stephen Yarrow.
“We’re going to have to give something back, because other countries are going to demand it,” said Yarrow, a biotechnologist with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Canada’s negotiating team.
The agreement was supposed to have been completed by December 1998, but the more than 120 countries involved have pushed the deadline back until after a final negotiating session in February 1999.
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Since 1995, they’ve been working on the agreement, which covers the transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms.
Doug Mutch said he hopes the rules won’t affect processed goods, such as canola oil made from transgenic varieties.
But the executive director of the Canada Grains Council, who represents the industry at the negotiations, told a one-day conference here last week that the definitions of terms in the agreement have not been negotiated.
Mutch said an August session will be the first true negotiations of the agreement.
He found out at a recent grains conference in London that few people in the international grains industry are aware of the protocol negotiations.
Yarrow said most delegates are diplomats or come from their countries’ environment departments. Few have a background in trade or agriculture, which is complicating discussions.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have been influential, especially on the positions of developing countries.
Big player not involved
The United States isn’t part of the protocol, explained Yarrow, because it hasn’t ratified the United Nations convention that spawned the negotiations.
Countries signing the protocol will have to live by it for five years until it is reviewed, said Yarrow. This will give more countries time to see the practical problems posed by some of their proposals, he said.
Rory McAlpine, a director in Agriculture Canada’s international markets bureau, noted international trade agreements were never designed to deal with the social and ethical judgments that come into play with biotechnology products.
He said these negotiations will set an important precedent. If they’re based on a rational, scientific approach, future trade agreements will benefit, he said.
The United States has indicated it will make biotechnology a priority in world trade agreement negotiations starting in 1999, he said.
But in the short term, the best opportunity for opening up trade in transgenic goods is through bilateral or multilateral agreements, he said.
