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Texas Agriculture Archive

January 3, 2003

Action urged on EU biotech ban

The American Farm Bureau Federation urged President Bush in late December "to take immediate action" to initiate a World Trade Organization case against the European Union's continuing moratorium against new approvals of biotech crops.

AFBF President Bob Stallman, in a letter to Bush signed by the presidents of all the state Farm Bureaus attending a meeting in Washington, D.C., said, "It is imperative that U.S. agriculture and other countries around the world understand that your administration is committed to enforcing the terms of trade agreements."

Stallman said the EU's four-year moratorium "continues unabated" and that recent actions by the EU to enact new biotech regulations have not addressed U.S. agriculture's concerns.

"The regulations as approved by the European Parliament and European Council are themselves not compliant with the WTO rules of international trade," he noted. "Replacing one non-WTO compliant action with another non-WTO compliant solution is not acceptable."

He said the EU has acknowledged that the moratorium is "not based on scientific evidence."

Further, the AFBF president said EU regulatory and scientific agencies "have determined repeatedly" that biotech products withheld from the European market "are safe for human consumption and pose no risk to the environment."

Stallman said the moratorium "has resulted in lost export markets for U.S. agricultural producers valued at hundreds of millions of dollars annually."

Last month, Farm Bureau and 25 other agricultural groups urged U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to go ahead with a WTO dispute settlement case.

"The EU's ongoing and illegal moratorium has resulted in lost export markets for U.S. producers and exporters, a slowdown in the adoption of new technologies in the United States and other countries, and increased production and testing costs for U.S. agricultural interests," the groups said.