US blames Europe’s GMO ban for ‘letting people starve in Africa’

Date: 16/01/03

US PRESIDENT George Bush's external trade representative has threatened to launch action against the EU through the World Trade Organization (WTO) to make it lift a four-year-old ban on importing genetically modified (GM) foods.

Robert Zoellick, speaking last week (9 January) in Washington, renewed US calls for WTO action on the long-running transatlantic GM dispute by attacking the EU's "Luddite" opposition to GM crops.

"I see something extremely disturbing: the European anti-scientific view spreading to other parts of the world - not letting Africans eat the food you and I eat, and instead letting people starve," he said.

"I find it immoral that people are not being able to be supplied food to live in Africa because people have invented dangers about biotechnology. That puts it rather high on my scale to deal with."

Several famine-stricken African countries turned away vast shipments of US food aid last year, fearing they contained biotech corn.

Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, said he would fight any US move at the WTO.

"If there was to be litigation, of course we would fight it, and I believe we would win," he said.

Meanwhile, in an effort to shed some scientific light on the GM-development debate, Commissioners Poul Nielson, development and humanitarian aid, and Philippe Busquin, research, will take part in a Brussels conference later this month on sustainable agriculture for developing countries.

The two-day talks will involve representatives of the biotech industry, environmental groups, developing countries and the scientific community.

Some 50 million hectares of GM crops are currently being cultivated globally by nearly six million farmers, according to figures from the European Association of Bioindustries.

Most commercial GM crops are grown in Canada, the US and Argentina, while South Africa approved them last autumn.

In response to mounting consumer concerns over "Frankenstein foods", the European Commission imposed a de facto moratorium on the authorisation and import of any new GM foods in June 1999.

New labelling and traceability laws on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) agreed by EU farm and environment ministers late last year could pave the way to the lifting of the moratorium, but no date has been set.

Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström, speaking at a recent press briefing, said she had given up answering that oft-asked question.

"It is useless to speculate on a date at this point," she said.

US President George Bush's external trade representative has threatened to launch action against the EU through the World Trade Organization to make it lift a four-year-old ban on importing genetically modified (GM) foods.