www.czu.cz ; www.usab-tm.ro ; www.raupp.info

With the countdown extended, talks continue this week in Geneva between the
US and Brussels to move the entrenched trade dispute on genetically modified
organisms forward, February 2005.

The World Trade Organisation agreed to set up a GMO dispute panel last
year following complaints from the US, and backed by Canada and Argentina,
that argued European Union (EU) policy on GMOs violates world trade rules.

Officials from the US and the Commission met today, and yesterday, in Geneva
to push discussions forward. Already, the panel has overshot the usual
timeline for a report, and is now in extension time.

In 1998 a de facto moratorium was born when Europe stopped approving GM
crops for food, feed and cultivation. US farmers quickly branded the ban a
barrier to trade and won the support of their government.

Ultimately, if the panel rules against the EU, it could impose trade
sanctions, giving the US the right to impose retaliatory tariffs on EU
goods.

But since the launch of the panel; facing the fury of anti-GM campaigners,
early last year the European Commission broke the ban, pushing through
approval for a GM sweetcorn supplied by Swiss biotech firm Syngenta to enter
the food chain. The first approval of a GM foodstuff since 1998.

While consumer groups complained that Brussels was caving into pressure from
the US, the main global exporter of GM crops, the Commission argued that
tough new rules on traceability and labelling of GM foodstuffs had cleared
the way for the re-launch of approvals.

But EU states are divided. The Commission has, to date, asked EU members
nine times to vote on authorising a GMO food or feed product. In eight
cases, there was no agreement and in the ninth, the deadlock around the
table resulted in the vote being postponed.

In a handful of recent years, genetically modified crops have made huge
inroads into US agriculture: eighty per cent of America's soy is now grown
from genetically modified seed.

But the unpopularity of biotech crops in the minds of the European consumer
means the food industry has been slow to embrace the GM food sources on the
grounds of simple business sense.

Food manufacturers keen to keep sales afloat will reject any use of
genetically modified sources in their formulations, and consequently any
need to GM label.

A recent survey polled by the UK?s consumer magazine Which? found that
consumers in the UK feel even more strongly about GM foods than they did two
years ago and more than six out of 10 people (61 per cent) were concerned
about the use of GM material in food production - up from 56 per cent in
2002.

Shoppers are not only concerned about GM ingredients in food; 68 per cent
want manufacturers to go one step further and source non-GM animal feed, so
meat and dairy products would have no links with the GM process.

[www.foodnavigator-usa.com]

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