Bush's comments on EU's ban of GMOs could inflame trade dispute

Food & Drink Weekly, June 2, 2003

President Bush's May 21 speech accusing the European Union of impeding efforts to fight hunger in Africa by discouraging the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is likely to exacerbate the already bitter trade dispute between United States and the EU over the issue, European officials said May 23.

Other sources said that U.S. and EU trade negotiators had hoped to deal with the dispute at the WTO -- where the United States and several other countries on May 13 launched dispute-settlement proceedings against the EU over the issue -- "quietly and in a businesslike fashion." But European officials said May 23 that the president's remarks in a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., will only serve to further politicize the dispute and inflame consumer opposition to GMOs throughout Europe.

The president said, in particular, that widening the use of new biotech-crops could help increase agricultural production and feed more people across the African continent. "Yet our partners in Europe are impeding this effort," Bush said. "They have blocked all new bio-crops because of unfounded, unscientific fears." He said that the EU moratorium on GMO approvals, imposed in 1998, has caused many African nations to avoid investing in biotechnology for fear that their products will be shut out of European markets. "European governments should join, not hinder, the great cause of ending hunger in Africa," Bush said.

An association representing 36 major European consumer organizations, meanwhile, wrote to the U.S. ambassador to the EU in Brussels -- Rockwell Schnabel -- on May 20 saying that the case the United States brought against the EU at the WTO will only increase resistance to biotechnology in the EU.

"Consumers will not feel confidence in products or processes that seem to be forced into the market against the reservations or opposition of their own governments," the European Consumers' Organization (BEUC) said in a letter to Schnabel. "Retailers [who are free to decide their own policies] will not stock or offer the new products. Important brand owners will not adopt the new products. Rejectionists will have a field day. The eventual acceptance of GM products in Europe will be retarded."

The BEUC letter said that European consumers favor "informed choice," and that they will not have the basis on which to make an informed choice until new GMO traceability and labeling regulations -- now being considered by the European Parliament -- are in place. European officials have said that the new regulations could take effect as early as this fall - leading to the lifting of the moratorium on GMO approvals shortly thereafter.