US challenge to GM approvals ban under fire from Commission

Date: 15/05/03

By Karen Carstens

THE European Commission has strongly criticized this week's decision by the United States to mount a challenge at the World Trade Organization against the EU's de facto moratorium on approvals of new genetically modified products.

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced on Tuesday (13 May) that the US was filing an official complaint, with Canada, Argentina and Egypt. Nine other countries - Australia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Uruguay - also announced their support for the US decision.

The Commission branded the move as "legally unwarranted, economically unfounded and politically unhelpful".

Zoellick maintained that the moratorium was in "complete violation" of WTO rules, EU rules and the bloc's own scientific advice. But Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy pointed out that the EU "has authorized GM varieties in the past and is currently processing applications. So what is the real US motive in bringing a case?"

Beate Gminder, spokeswoman for Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne, offered one simple explanation - the US is impatient for market access. The delay in lifting the EU moratorium is potentially costing US farmers billions in lost revenue.

EU officials have already indicated that the moratorium will be lifted once new traceability and labelling laws on GM products have entered into force, possibly by the end of this year. These would require the labelling of food and - for the first time ever - feed.

However, Green politicians and campaigners predict that the US woes could possibly increase then. "Currently, the US exports massive quantities of GM feed to the EU," said one agricultural expert. "Under the new traceability and labelling regime, all GM food and feed will have to be labelled, so this could pose an even bigger problem [to the US]."

The upshot, he said, would be a massive "consumer rejection moratorium". However, Simon Barber, director of the plant biotechnology unit at biotech industry association Europabio, dismissed this argument.

"I don't think the labelling of feed would have that kind of impact," he said, adding that eggs, meat and milk products derived from animals currently fed with GM feed in the EU do not - and would not in future - have to be labelled. "The only person seeing the feed label is the farmer," he said, adding that the main issue was getting the GM approvals system back on track.

Since January, 19 applications have rolled into the EU's GM approvals pipeline from a host of member states, but each must be approved by Brussels and the remaining member states.

The US government has announced that it intends to launch a WTO challenge against the EU's de facto moratorium on the approval of new genetically modified products.