US mulls WTO action to lift EU block on GM crops
Date: 21-Jun-02
Country: EU
Author: David Evans
"There is increasing concern about this, we have been more than patient," Allen Johnson, chief U.S. agricultural negotiator, told journalists during a visit to Brussels.
"We are considering all our options including dispute settlement (at the WTO)," he said following talks with EU officials on the issue.
Amid concern in many EU countries over genetically modified (GM) food, the EU's approvals process for new crop strains has been frozen since mid-1998. It has left many farmers in the United States in limbo and unable to export to EU markets.
Allen said for maize growers alone, this represented an annual loss of some $200 million.
U.S. officials have previously put the overall cost to U.S. companies at some $4 billion a year.
The European Commission has previously said its position could leave it open to a WTO challenge but a group of member states led by France has insisted that tougher rules on labelling and traceability of products containing GM crops be in place before the de-facto moratorium can be lifted.
The Commission has proposed in response that all food and animal feed made from GM ingredients be labelled as such, even if processing has destroyed any trace of genetic modification.
It also called for a system of traceability, putting the onus on manufacturers to declare any GM content at each stage of the production process.
U.S. CRITICAL OF NEW LABELLING LAWS
The United States criticised the proposals, when they were unveiled a year ago, saying they were unwieldy, costly to implement and open to fraud.
That legislation is still moving through the EU's institutional process and currently rests with the European Parliament, which has powers of co-decision over food safety along with national governments.
Earlier this month, a key parliamentary committee agreed to go even further than the Commission plans, voting through amendments that would extend labelling requirements to meat, eggs and milk from animals reared on GM fodder.
It also deleted a proposal to allow up to one percent of unauthorised GM strains in non-GM products - so-called adventitious precence - effectively banning any contamination by crops not allowed in the EU.
The committee also voted for a 0.5 percent maximum threshold for accidental mixing of authorised GM crops with non-GM.
"At the moment the European Parliament seems to be making things worse. All these (amendments) add to a non-functioning system that creates an opportunity for fraud," Allen said.
A full meeting of the European Parliament is due to consider the proposed legislation and the amendments from its environment committee at a plenary session in Strasbourg next month.