Trans-Atlantic food fight

WASHINGTON, DC—The dispute over the European Union's long-standing ban on imports of US genetically-modified foods is like "watching a bad movie," said Christopher A. Padilla, assistant US trade representative for intergovernmental affairs. "It's getting worse, not better. They've told us for four years that a lifting of the moratorium was just around the corner. How many times do we have to watch this bad movie before we know how it ends?" he asked. "The moratorium is motivated by politics. It is not motivated by science."Padilla made his comments Feb. 13 at a forum sponsored by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology in Washington, DC. The Bush administration is coming under increased pressure to file suit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the EU's ban. But the matter is complicated by fears of retaliation as well as the administration's efforts to win European support for military action against Iraq. Padilla declined to say what the Bush administration intended to do. Ron Gaskill, director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the European moratorium has no legal basis and could be overturned if challenged. "We need to go forward as quickly as we possibly can" in filing a lawsuit, he said. "US farmers are losing considerable amounts of sales." Julia Moore, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, questioned the wisdom of proceeding with a legal challenge. If the US files the case and wins, she said, it could have a reverse effect by setting back consumer acceptance of GM food in Europe. "This is not a trade dispute. It's about consumer confidence in Europe," she said. "If we are at this stage perceived as forcing this technology down the European consumer's throat, we will delay the acceptance of this technology in Europe and in other parts of the world."Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former Reagan administration official, agreed. "We have to watch the movie longer," he said, alluding to Padilla's analogy. "The worst possible thing to do would be to proceed with the case now." "A WTO case to force Europe to accept GMOs is the surest way to guarantee a European boycott of GMOs and a hardening of irrational European fears and positions," he said. "Showing restraint and a willingness to listen, rather than resorting to coercive action, would give a welcome relief to our already degraded image in Europe, at a critical moment in the history of the trans-Atlantic relationship."But Padilla was adamant. "This is no longer simply a matter of irrational European consumer fears based on a lack of science and the lack of a European regulatory system." Some African countries, such as Zambia, are refusing to distribute US food aid to their starving people because of fears triggered by the European ban, he said. Uganda and Zimbabwe are refusing to adopt GM crops because they fear their other food exports to Europe will be jeopardized. "Enough is enough. The time for action is now."The value of US-European agricultural trade totaled $6.4 billion in 2001, making the EU the fourth largest single market for US farm products. The moratorium costs US farmers some $300 million annually in lost sales of GM foods to European Union nations. These primarily involve corn, cotton, and soybeans. About 70% of soybeans and 25% of US corn are genetically modified. While not all are approved for human consumption (many are grown for animal feedstock), nearly 70% of all packaged goods in US supermarkets contain GM ingredients.There are 18 biotech food products approved in the EU, but a de facto moratorium on further approvals has been in place since June 1999, with 13 more applications pending. "We have to work to get the message to them that GM biotech foods are not inherently unsafe to human health," Gaskill said. "Sure, at first, there will some backlash, some rhetoric. But we feel the rhetoric will dissipate." A suit in the WTO, he said, would provide "an opportunity to interject a reasonable message and bring some rationality back to this entire issue."

Trans-Atlantic food fight

Heated debate over US response to GM food ban in Europe.

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