EU, WTO, GM Products: Farmers Backs Against The Wall

WTO & EU At Odds Over GM Crops:

"Iraq Stymies EU Case" article by Jane Fullerton in the Farm Journal, Mar 2003 Issue: Discussion of a pending US decision whether to file suit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a European Union (EU) moratorium on approvals of genetically modified (GM) food products. The decision has been postponed because of the war with Iraq, because White House officials don't want to further alienate EU allies.

According to the Farm Journal article, there are presently 18 GM products approved by the European Union, with the last approval issued in 1998. Approval of 13 other GM products is apparently being held up by the June, 1999 EU moratorium on GM products

The article quotes Clyde Preskowitz, a former Commerce Department official: "If we go ahead with this case, the consumer reaction in Europe...is going to be such that not only are you not going to sell $300 million of GM foods, but you're going to sell $400 million or $500 million less of things that we already sell. Because there's going to be a tremendous backlash against American goods, and it won't just be food."

U.S. ag groups, and members of congress who are in favor of the WTO suit, have expressed dismay at such nay-saying. The Farm Journal article quotes Ron Gaskill of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We feel as if, from a farmer's perspective, our back is against the wall." Gaskell goes on to say, "U.S. farmers really don't have a lot of faith that a WTO decision would be complied with. Certainly if you look at the beef hormone case of a few years ago, [the Europeans] did not comply with that adverse ruling."

According to Ms. Fullerton's article, the beef strategy was supposed to isolate the beef hormone ban in Europe, but it didn't work. She reports that Philip Seng, president and CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, estimates that European-style hormone rules have spread to countries with 40% of the world's beef-eating consumers.

In closing, Ms. Fullerton again quotes Gaskell. He expresses the hope that a biotech case would allow for retaliatory tariffs on imports from the EU. "If we don't take the case, we don't have any remedy, "he says. "We sit here...losing more than $1 billion in sales, to markets that we really, absolutely need."

I doubt that retaliatory tariffs against the EU would do anything positive. In the past, that kind of effort has only increased hatred of the U.S.

Those in favor of filing suit with the WTO over the EU moratorium are ignoring a cardinal rule of marketing: You Can't Corral Your Customers. If they think for a moment that Europeans can be forced to eat GMO products if they don't want to, they're a few bushels short of a load!

American farmers are between a rock and a hard place with GMO's. On one hand, they are almost bound hand and foot by the manufacturers of GMO seed. If they try to follow an alternative route, they are attacked on all sides. Take for example, Monsanto's large, successful monetary suits against farmers whose non-GMO seed is polluted by GMO crops. On the other hand, Europe doesn't want GMO products, and American farmers caught in the GMO machine are helpless. Farming has ever been a hard life, but never more than right now for conventional farmers.

Contact your elected representatives often and ask them to oppose the WTO suit against the European GMO moratorium, and/or to act on behalf of any particular issue you support or oppose. Find your congressional reps and senators.

Vote with your feet - buy organic, non-GMO products!

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