Europe's Continued Hostility to GM Crops Runs Afoul of Science, WTO
The Competitive Enterprise Institute published an op-ed co-authored by Gregory Conko and Henry I. Miller on the continued resistance by the European Union to force member countries to lift bans on genetically modified products. This resistance comes despite the fact that the World Trade Organization ruled in November 2005 that some European countries were breaking international trade rules by prohibiting the import of GM crops and food. Thanks for bringing this to people’s attention gentlemen! Europe needs to realize the value of biotechnology. Read the beginning of the op-ed below and follow the link to read the rest.
C.S. Prakash
Europe's Continued Hostility to GM Crops Runs Afoul of Science, WTO
Competitive Enterprise Institute
January 23, 2008
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom may have new leaders who bring the promise overall of better trans-Atlantic relations, but when it comes to the politics of global trade, some things never change. This month, the European Union missed yet another deadline for correcting its illegal regulation of gene-spliced, or "genetically modified" (GM), crop varieties, following a World Trade Organization decision in November 2005 that some European countries were breaking international trade rules by prohibiting the import of GM foods and crops.
Although the WTO bluntly scolded the EU for imposing a moratorium on gene-spliced crop approvals from 1998 to 2004, that finding was a foregone conclusion. European politicians, including then-EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrцm, had acknowledged that the moratorium was "an illegal, illogical, and otherwise arbitrary line in the sand."
The WTO also made clear that national bans on certain gene-spliced foods in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg were blatant violations both of those countries' treaty obligations and EU rules, but the European Commission has been impotent in persuading its rogue members to conform to EU policies. Not only are most of those national bans still in place but, in October 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy implemented a new moratorium on the commercial cultivation of gene-spliced corn.
The most important victory for the United States and its partners was the WTO's judgment that the European Commission failed to abide by its own regulations by "undue delaying" of approvals for 25 gene-spliced food products. The culprit here was (and is) the European Commission's highly politicized, sclerotic, two-stage approval process: Each application first must be cleared for marketing by various scientific panels, and then voted on by politicians, who routinely undo the scientific decisions.
As the WTO pointed out, the relevant EC scientific committees had recommended approval of all 25 product applications. But, for transparently political reasons rather than concerns about consumer health or environmental protection, EU politicians repeatedly refused to sign off on the final approvals.
