Republicans Leaders Ask Bush to take GMO dispute to the WTO

The Associated Press
January 29, 2003
Republicans ask Bush to take food dispute to international trade court
By JIM ABRAMS

House Republican leaders, saying that European policy banning
genetically modified food from the United States was discriminatory and
damaging to American farmers, urged President Bush Wednesday to bring
the issue before the World Trade Organization.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., in a letter to Bush, said the
European Union moratorium on genetically modified agriculture imports
from the United States, in place since 1998, was costing American
farmers almost $300 million a year.

"This is simply a non-tariff barrier based on politics and
protectionism, not science," said the letter, also signed by Rep. Roy
Blunt of Missouri, who handles farm issues among the GOP leadership,
Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Resources Committee
Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and others. U.S. Trade Representative
Robert Zoellick earlier this month said the administration was close to
bringing a case before the World Trade Organization. He said the EU
moratorium was a clear violation of WTO rules.

American farm products have been genetically modified since the 1970s to
make them more resistant to insects or disease. About two-thirds of U.S.
soybean production and almost one-third of the U.S. corn crop is
genetically modified.

European consumer groups have led the efforts to keep such products out
of Europe, although American farm groups and farm-state lawmakers say
that biotech products have repeatedly been proven to be safe for human
consumption and pose no risk to the environment.

The United States also says the EU ban has impeded efforts to respond to
the food crisis in Africa because some African countries have rejected
American food aid, fearing that EU countries would no longer accept
their own food exports if their crops become intermixed with genetically
modified seeds.

Hastert said America's soybean exports to China, valued at $1 billion,
could also feel the impact because of delays in China in formulating new
rules on approving and labeling genetically modified farm products.

Unless the EU is challenged, Hastert wrote, "this discriminatory policy
would be disastrous for U.S. farmers and their ability to provide an
abundant reliable product for the world's population at a time when
dozens of countries are currently experiencing serious food shortages."

Zoellick, in a letter to The Wall Street Journal last Friday, criticized
the "European fog of misinformation and protectionism" and noted that
Africans were "refusing to stave off starvation by accepting the same
food that Europeans freely eat when they visit the United States."

Zoellick was responding to a letter to the paper a week before from EU
Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy in which he said that food aid to Africa
should be about meeting humanitarian aids and "should not be about
trying to advance the case for GM (genetically modified) food, or
planting GM crops for export, or finding outlets for domestic surplus."