Agricultural Biotechnology: The U.S.-EU Dispute

The Congressional Research Service, a department of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national and international policy issues. Some of the CRS work is carried out specifically for individual members of Congress or their staff and is confidential. However, there is also much CRS compiled material which is considered public but is not formally published on the CRS website.

For that reason a number of other organisations try to keep track of these publications and make them publicly available via their own websites. Currently, ESO uses the following websites to track these reports and allow access to them in ESO:

EveryCRSReport.com
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

In some cases hyperlinks allows you to access all versions of a report, including the latest. Note that many reports are periodically updated.In May 2003, the United States, Canada, and Argentina challenged in World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement the European Union’s (EU’s) de facto moratorium on biotechnology product approvals in place since 1998. Although the EU effectively lifted the moratorium in May 2004 by approving a genetically engineered (GE) corn variety, the three complainants pursued the case, in part because a number of EU member states continue to block approved biotech products. The moratorium reportedly cost U.S. corn growers some $300 million in exports to the EU annually. The EU moratorium, U.S. officials also contend, threatened other agricultural exports not only to the EU, but also to other parts of the world where the EU approach to regulating agricultural biotechnology is taking hold. The EU approach presumes that the products of biotechnology are inherently different from their conventional counterparts and should be more closely regulated. On February 7, 2006, the WTO dispute panel, in its interim confidential report, ruled that a moratorium had existed, that bans on EU approved GE crops in six EU member countries violated WTO rules, and that the EU failed to ensure that its approval procedures were conducted without “undue delay.” Other claims by the United States were rejected.

EveryCRSReport.com https://www.everycrsreport.com/

Federation of American Scientists (FAS): Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports https://fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html

---