THE United States, Canada and Egypt, supported by Australia, Argentina and others, are taking the European Union to the World Trade Organization to challenge the EU’s five-year-old moratorium on approving genetically modified foods.
Canada is right to back this U.S.-led multinational action to protect the important principle that health and environmental restrictions on trade should be allowed only if based on sound science. The EU’s moratorium has no scientific basis.
The issue is important to prairie farmers, especially canola producers, whose income is directly affected.
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Before the ban, Canada’s canola sales to the EU had grown, peaking at more than a million tonnes in a year of EU shortages. The Canola Council of Canada says conditions were right several times during the ban to make more sales.
But the trade was blocked, despite no evidence that GM foods are a health risk.
Indeed, the week before the WTO challenge was announced, the Royal Society of London, Britain’s academy of science, reported “there is no credible evidence that human health can be damaged by eating DNA sequences created by the genetic modification of foodstuff ingredients.”
It is only the latest in a host of scientific bodies around the world saying the same thing.
As for endangering the environment, the Canadian experience with GM canola has identified an issue related to pollen drift. But the matter is at most a nuisance and is best dealt with by increased attention to crop management, not outright bans.
The EU restricted trade in GM foods simply to pander to baseless consumer concerns stirred up by environmental fear mongers and opponents of corporate influence in farming.
The challenge will no doubt be criticized as an effort to thwart European consumers’ choice to reject GM foods, but it is just the opposite. The EU ban now denies European consumers the ability to choose between GM and non GM food at their supermarkets.
The EU is working on a traceability process and food labelling rules but the process is slow and is drifting toward regulations that will be impossible to meet, re-establishing the ban in another guise.
It is time to use the WTO to pressure the EU to follow the letter and spirit of international trade rules it willingly signed. By doing so, we also signal that efforts to use food labels to reinstate the ban by other means are unacceptable.
This will also give choice to developing countries now intimidated from investigating how GM technology can help their agricultural production for fear of losing access to the EU market.
Genetic technology does not create Frankenfoods. It’s a tool with the ability to make the world better. Its use should not be restricted because of baseless fear.
