The European Union and Canada settled a World Trade Organization complaint over the way the EU approves imports of genetically modified products.
The agreement signed today in Geneva “provides for the establishment of a regular dialogue on issues of mutual interest on agriculture biotechnology,” the European Commission said in a statement from Brussels.
Canada, the U.S. and Argentina complained about the EU’s biotech policy in May 2003. The WTO ruled in September 2006 that a six-year ban the EU imposed on biotech foods until 2004 was illegal.
When the EU lifted the ban, it tightened labeling rules and created a food agency to screen applications. Since then, it’s used an approval process that the U.S. complains is too slow, issuing about a dozen authorizations of gene-modified products for human food and animal feed and has yet to allow cultivation.
“The mutually agreed solution with Canada is a clear sign that this type of dialogue works,” EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said. “I hope we can follow the same constructive approach with Argentina and the United States.”
Resolving the dispute means Canadian producers of modified products, particularly canola seed, will have greater access to the 27-nation EU, said Canadian Trade Minister Stockwell Day.
The bloc’s talks with Canada “will continue to help improve market access and avoid unnecessary obstacles to trade,” he said in a statement. “This is positive news for Canadian producers of all agricultural GMO products.”
Before European countries began to restrict imports of genetically engineered products, Canadian canola exports to the EU were worth as much as C$425 million ($380 million) in 1994.
The commission, the EU’s regulatory arm, faces resistance to gene-modified foods from member states including Austria, France and Greece. Surveys show opposition to such foods by more than half of European consumers, who worry about risks such as human resistance to antibiotics and the development of “superweeds” impervious to herbicides.
The settlement reached today provides for bi-annual meeting that will focus on issues including biotech-product approvals in Canada or EU and possible “applications of commercial interest to either side” as well as the commercial and economic outlook for future approvals of gene-modified products.
“This dialogue is aimed at an exchange of information that would contribute to avoiding unnecessary obstacles to trade,” the commission said. “The EU is not expected to modify its current regulatory regime on biotech products, which was never subject to WTO challenge in itself.”
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