WTO vs. Europe: Less - and Also More - Than it Seems

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GMW: WTO vs. Europe: Less - and Also More - Than it Seems

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Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:30:37 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

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EXCERPT: " We made a decision based on facts and those facts have not

changed, " Zambian Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana told Reuters, " We

do not want GM foods [and we] hope no one in Africa feels they have to

change their views based on that ruling. "

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WTO vs. Europe: Less - and Also More - Than it Seems

Brian Tokar

Toward Freedom, 20 February 2006

http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/759/0/

 

In the late Spring of 2003, amidst the political fallout of " Old

Europe's " refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush

administration

threw down a gauntlet that threatened to permanently aggravate

transatlantic hostilities. As a political favor to its agribusiness

allies in

the Midwestern farm belt, the administration filed a complaint with the

World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking to overturn Europe's de facto

five-year moratorium on approvals of new genetically engineered crop

varieties. The governments of Argentina and Canada also signed on to the

complaint; together these three countries grow roughly 80 percent of the

world's genetically engineered crops.

 

Just last week, the substance of the WTO's decision on this case was

released to the parties involved, and almost immediately leaked to the

press. As nearly everyone expected, the WTO's anonymous three-judge panel

ruled that some of Europe's restrictions on genetically modified

organisms (GMOs) violate global trade rules, and that any attempt to

regulate

this technology requires strict compliance with the trade body's

exacting and often industry-biased scientific risk assessment procedures.

Perhaps more than any previous WTO decision, the ruling confirmed many

people's fears about the role this secretive and unaccountable trade body

would play in today's world.

 

The response to the decision from both sides of the global GMO debate

was immediate. Supporters of the technology were quick to declare

victory, and denounce European concerns about genetic engineering as mere

protectionism for European vs. American agricultural products. They

predicted that the WTO would impose penalties of over a billion

dollars to

compensate US companies for lost European exports, and claimed this

decision `proved' that opposition to GMOs has no scientific basis.

Critics

of the biotech industry denounced the WTO's violation of people's right

to make appropriate choices about their food and how it is grown, and

pointed out that Europeans would not begin consuming genetically

engineered corn or soybeans as a result of this decision. Its main impact

would be on other countries still struggling to address the

implications of

this technology. " [T]he WTO suit is clearly an effort to chill other

nations from pursuing any regulations on GE foods, " explained an alliance

of 15 US-based NGOs in a statement that immediately preceded the

ruling. African and Asian governments are by far the most conspicuous

targets.

 

On one hand, the WTO panel ruled against the European Union (EU) in

each of the three substantive areas addressed by the US complaint. First,

the unnamed trade judges declared that Europe had indeed imposed a

sweeping moratorium on new genetically engineered crop varieties, in

violation of the international trade agreement on " Sanitary and

Phytosanitary

Measures. " Second, they ruled that approvals of 24 specific GMO crop

varieties had been illegally delayed. Third, the judges declared that

additional prohibitions imposed by six countries—Austria, Belgium,

France,

Germany, Italy, and Luxemburg—are inconsistent with these countries'

obligations as members of the global trade body.

 

But on the other hand, the WTO officials were careful to point out that

they had dismissed most aspects of the US complaint. This is clear from

the concluding 22 pages of the 1050 page decision, the only portion

that has been publicly released. The decision, for example, explicitly

does not address the safety of biotech products, their similarity (or

not)

to conventional crop varieties, countries' right to require pre-market

approval of GE varieties, nor even the European Union's specific

regulatory procedures. The WTO panel affirmed that member countries

have the

right to consider all possible hazards of GMOs in their risk

assessments, even those that are perceived to be " highly unlikely to

occur. "

 

The defending countries' principal violation was a " failure to complete

individual approval procedures without undue delay, " no more, no less.

Other aspects of the US, Canada and Argentina's complaints were largely

rejected. The EU was found to have acted inconsistently with only one

clause of the international sanitary measures agreement, having to do

with the timeliness of GMO approvals. In six other areas, including the

scientific validity of Europe's regulations, the decision refutes US

assertions that Europeans acted inconsistently with their WTO

obligations.

The claim that European regulations discriminated against US imports in

a protectionist manner was explicitly rejected, and the panel upheld

European regulators' non-approval of three GMO varieties developed by

Aventis Crop Science, now part of Bayer.

 

The six countries with additional prohibitions on GMOs were found to

have violated WTO rules by enacting measures that trumped EU risk

assessment protocols. Thus the WTO implicitly endorsed the principle of

pre-emption: that no member state can impose regulations more

stringent than

those of the European Union as a whole. There is no claim that

countries introduced invalid or insufficient scientific evidence;

their only

offense was to enact a political decision that the interests of their

people are best served by keeping many genetically engineered foods

out of

the country. It is precisely these kinds of precautionary political

decisions that international trade rules aim to prohibit, even though a

precautionary approach has been endorsed by parties to the United

Nations' Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

 

European officials' defense was that they never actually imposed a

moratorium on GMOs, only that companies were not complying with the

existing approval process, leading to unanticipated delays. This

argument was

apparently rejected by the trade officials. However, during the three

years that this case has been pending, EU officials clarified and

streamlined their approval processes for engineered crop varieties.

One new

genetically engineered sweet corn has already been approved, though no

one realistically expects it to be grown or marketed in Europe. The

Union has implemented detailed GMO labeling and traceability rules

designed

to conform to WTO requirements. These protections still go far beyond

anything seen in the US, and the Bush administration has repeatedly

threatened a new complaint to challenge them. But first, according to

Friends of the Earth, the EU will have 30 days to file a response to

the WTO

ruling, and is entitled to seek a " reasonable period of time " to

comply, followed by another six-month review.

 

What does this decision mean for people who mainly want to know what's

in their food? That still depends on where in the world you live. In

Europe, genetically engineered ingredients have been virtually eliminated

from processed foods, even products imported by US companies and sold

under US brand names. Any ingredient that is more than 0.9 percent

genetically engineered needs to be clearly labeled as such. European

countries import engineered soybeans from the US and Brazil for animal

feed,

but there is growing pressure on meat processors and retailers to

curtail this practice. Some 3500 cities, towns and regions in Europe have

declared themselves GMO-Free Zones, and just last November, Swiss voters

endorsed a measure that prohibits the growing of engineered crops for

five years.

 

In the US, new varieties of genetically engineered corn, soy, canola

and cotton continue to be marketed and approved for sale with only a

cursory, and often voluntary, examination of company data by federal

regulators. Most Hawaiian papayas are genetically engineered, as are

just a

few varieties of summer squash. Milk from cows injected with Monsanto's

recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone also continues to be sold in many

regions of the country. Nearly 100 New England towns have voted in favor

of a moratorium and labeling of GMOs, and four California counties have

banned the raising of engineered crops or livestock. But attempts to

more comprehensively regulate this technology have languished under the

pressure of Monsanto's potent political influence, especially at the

federal level.

 

The rest of the world may be up for grabs now. People throughout Asia,

Africa, and parts of Latin America have raised a determined opposition

to GMOs, viewing the technology as a fundamental threat to food

sovereignty and the survival of traditional agriculture. Numerous

countries

have labeling and testing requirements that reach far beyond what is

acceptable to Monsanto or the Bush administration. One hundred thirty

countries (excluding the US) have ratified the UN's Biosafety Protocol,

which requires prior informed consent before seeds or other living

engineered organisms can be shipped into any country. It is in the

so-called

developing world that the pressure from the WTO's decision may be most

felt, particularly in Africa, where Zambia and other countries have

steadfastly resisted the introduction of GMOs, especially in the form

of US

food aid. " We made a decision based on facts and those facts have not

changed, " Zambian Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana told Reuters, " We

do not want GM foods [and we] hope no one in Africa feels they have to

change their views based on that ruling. "

 

Brian Tokar's latest book is Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade

and the Globalization of Hunger (www.genetraders.org).

 

 

 

 

 

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