U.S. Groups Applauds European Loss at WTO

WASHINGTON - Oct 2/06 - SNS -- The U.S. based National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) applauded a World Trade Organization (WTO) finding that the European Union operated a de facto moratorium on biotechnology-enhanced agricultural commodities.

In a press statement, the groups called on the European Union, its member states and other countries to bring their regulatory systems and procedures governing biotech-enhanced commodities into compliance with the WTO's decision.

The NGFA and NAEGA also encouraged WTO-member states to use the decision as an opportunity to further synchronize the timing of regulatory reviews and approvals of biotechnology-enhanced products to facilitate international trade in grains and oilseeds.

The decision by a WTO dispute-resolution panel officially was issued on Sept. 29 and is subject to a 60-day appeal process under WTO rules. The case had been brought by the United States, Canada and Argentina in 2003. Other countries that subsequently joined the case as third parties in support of the case included Australia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Uruguay.

The NGFA and NAEGA said that the WTO decision was particularly significant because it determined that international regulation of agricultural biotechnology is governed by the WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS), which commits WTO-member states to use science- and risk-based criteria to determine the safety of such products for humans, animals and the environment.

In this regard, the WTO decision stated that the European Union had failed to provide scientific or regulatory justification for its de facto moratorium, which the WTO panel found had been in place from June 1999 until at least Aug. 29, 2003 when the panel was formed.

Significantly, in a change from its preliminary decision, the WTO panel also withdrew its earlier finding that the European Union had abandoned its de facto moratorium on approvals of biotech-enhanced commodities, stating that it could not determine whether the European Union had actually done so. The WTO panel ruled that the European Union bring its practices into compliance with WTO rules if, and to the extent that, a moratorium still exists.

Further, the WTO determined that the European Union had applied and operated its moratorium in a way that violated the SPS agreement's stipulation that countries complete individual biotech product approvals "without undue delay." The WTO panel found that the European Union had violated this requirement to conduct timely reviews of biotechnology-enhanced products on 24 of 27 pending product applications cited in the U.S. complaint. Some of those biotech product applications have been languishing in the European Union regulatory system for eight years.

In addition, the NGFA and NAEGA said it was highly significant that the WTO ruled against the European Union's contention that international regulation of agricultural biotechnology was subject to other ancillary international environmental agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Biosafety Protocol.

The WTO panel determined that these accords were "not relevant" to the interpretation of WTO agreements at issue in the case. Rather, the panel ruled that current WTO rules - principally the SPS agreement - encompass trade in biotech-enhanced commodities, including pre-market approval regulatory regimes like that imposed by the European Union. The NGFA and NAEGA said this aspect of the WTO panel's finding provides "important clarity" in the relationship between the SPS and multi-layer international environmental agreements.

The NGFA and NAEGA also cited as important the WTO dispute-resolution panel's upholding of the claim by the United States and other countries that several European Union-member states violated WTO rules by imposing individual biotech bans after the European Union's own scientific authority had found the products to be safe.

Specifically, the WTO panel found that bans imposed by six European Union-member states - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg - on biotech-enhanced products already approved by the European Union scientific authority needed to be revised because the individual states failed to provide scientific justification for their actions.