ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The United States is ready to go to the World Trade Organization to try to open Europe to genetically modified grains and food.
But a European Union official says such a move would be “the height of lunacy” and could actually set back the clock on allowing new biotech products into Europe.
Allen Johnson, chief agricultural trade negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative, says the four-year-old EU moratorium on approving agricultural biotech products must end.
“It is a clear violation of their obligations and we can’t allow that to continue unchallenged,” he told reporters after speaking to the annual U.S. wheat industry convention.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“We think we should be moving forward with a case. There will be a decision soon on this.”
Johnson said the EU moratorium is restricting access to that huge and lucrative market and contributing to widespread misinformation about biotech in other parts of the world.
He cited several African countries that recently rejected U.S. food aid because the shipments were GM.
“We’ve seen starving African countries turn down food that we eat every day,” he said.
Johnson’s comments on the EU echoed those made earlier in the convention by a spokesperson for the U.S. biotech industry, who launched a blistering attack on the Europeans.
Mike Phillips, executive director for food and agriculture for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said the “illegal” moratorium is hurting U.S. farmers and exporters, as well as his industry.
“Europe must be told it has to respect a rules-based system of trade,” he said, predicting the U.S. government will soon initiate a dispute settlement case with the WTO.
“They’ve taken this way too far. It’s been going on for four years and it’s got to stop.”
But the EU’s agricultural counsellor based in Washington, D.C., urged the Americans to be patient.
Gerard Kiely said in an interview the EU will soon have a labelling and traceability system that should reduce consumer fears about GM food.
“I expect approvals of GMOs to start again in the EU within this next six-month period,” he said. “It would be total stupidity for them to take a case forward at this stage with the problem nearly solved.”
He warned that a WTO case would raise the profile of the GM issue, which has been quiet in Europe recently, and could generate a fresh wave of protests by anti-biotech groups.
Kiely added that some European farmers are anxious to begin using some new biotech products, but the issue is sensitive among consumers.
He also laid blame for the problem at the feet of the U.S. government and the companies that developed the products.
The companies showed “arrogance” in the way they brought the products into the system without taking consumer concerns into account, and a lack of proper regulation in the U.S. resulted in disasters like the StarLink corn situation, in which GM feed corn ended up in food products.
“If all this had been handled differently from Day 1, maybe we’d never have had this problem in Europe.”
