GMW: America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world

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GMW: America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world

" GM WATCH " <info

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:33:03 GMT

 

 

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America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world

 

The reason the US took Europe to the WTO court was to prise open

lucrative markets elsewhere

 

by John Vidal

 

 

The Guardian, February 13, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,,1708375,00.html

 

Just a few years ago, World Trade Organisation officials used to act

hurt when described by social activists as irresponsible, secretive

bureaucrats who trampled over national sovereignty and placed free

trade over the environment or human rights. But that was when the

global-trade policeman ruled on disputes that had little bearing on

Europeans.

 

The WTO court's latest ruling will greatly increase the number of

people who believe the organisation needs radical reform, if not

burial.

This week three judges emerged after years of secret deliberation to

rule that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM food imports

between 1999 and 2003, violating WTO rules. The court also ruled

that Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg had no

legal grounds to impose their own unilateral import bans. " Europe

guilty! " shouted the US press. " This is glorious news for the Bush

administration, " said one blogger.

 

Actually, the judges said much more, but in true WTO style no one

has been allowed to know what. A few bureaucrats in the US, EU,

Argentina and Canada have reportedly seen the full 1,045-page

report, and an edited summary of some of its conclusions has been

leaked. But no one, it seems, will take responsibility for the

ruling, which may force the EU to pay hundreds of millions of

dollars to compensate some of the world's most heavily subsidised

farmers, and could change the laws of at least six countries that

have imposed GM bans.

 

In fact the US has mostly won a lot of new enemies. Rather than

going away, as the biotech companies and Washington fervently hoped,

the opposition to GM foods seems to have been growing since 2004

when the case was brought to the WTO. Europe, its member states and

its consumers all rejected the ruling last week, making the WTO look

even more out of touch and incompetent to rule on issues about the

environment, health and consumer choice.

 

The European commission, which has been trying to force GM crops

into Europe over the heads of its member states, says the ruling is

" irrelevant " because its laws have already been changed. Meanwhile,

individual countries who dislike being told what to eat or grow by

the EC as much as the WTO say they will resist any attempts to make

them accept GM.

 

In the past few days Hungary has declared that it is in its economic

interests to remain GM-free, and Greece and Austria have affirmed

their total opposition to the crops. Italy has called the WTO ruling

" unbalanced " and Poland's prime minister has pledged to keep the

country GM-free. Local government is even more opposed: more than

3,500 elected councils in 170 regions of Europe have declared

themselves GM-free.

 

There is little the WTO, the EC or the US can do in face of this

coalition of the unwilling. If the US again tries to impose its GM

products on Europe - as it did in the 90s, sparking the whole

debacle - the attempt will backfire. Europe's biotech industry may

now try to force the EC to use the WTO judgment to get the six

countries with import bans to repeal anti-GM laws, but it will meet

an even broader, more determined movement.

 

In fact, Washington and the US companies are not that bothered by

Europe's predictable reaction. Europe has all but dropped off the

world's GM map. The companies and the supermarkets know there is

little or no demand for GM crops, and that Europe's subsidised

farmers are reluctant to alienate the public further by growing them.

 

It is now clear that the real reason the US took Europe to the WTO

court was was to make it easier for its companies to prise open

regulatory doors in China, India, south-east Asia, Latin America and

Africa, where most US exports now go. This is where millions of

tonnes of US food aid heads, and where US GM companies are desperate

to have access, buying up seed companies and schmoozing presidents

and prime ministers.

 

More than two-thirds of exported US corn now goes to Asia and

Africa, where once it went to Europe. As the Monsanto man said this

week about the WTO ruling: " Our feeling is that it's important for

countries other than the EU to have science-based regulatory

frameworks. "

 

Like the tobacco industry, GM companies are now focusing almost

exclusively on developing countries. But here the industry is

meeting stiff opposition from powerful unions and farming groups.

Brazil has caved in, but Bolivia may shortly become the first Latin

American country to fully reject GM. Some Indian states are deeply

opposed, and there have been major demonstrations in the

Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and elsewhere. India's largest

farmers' organisation this week said the result of the WTO verdict

would be that the US would become more aggressive in dumping GM food

on to developing countries.

 

The US maintains that through the WTO it has won a great victory for

free trade, and passed a significant milestone in US attempts " to

have GM crops accepted throughout the world " . Perhaps, but the

battle is far from won, and in the meantime anyone opposing the

crops is being reclassed as an enemy of America.

 

Within hours of the WTO decision, Jose Bove, the French farmer who

has led European protests, arrived in New York to give an invited

talk to Cornell students about GM food - and was immediately sent

back to France by the US government.

 

john.vidal

 

 

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