EU is Urged to Accept Biotech Products

The European Union must accept more genetically modified foods to avoid renewed complaints about market barriers at the World Trade Organization, the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said Thursday. Any EU delay over the approval of genetically modified crops declared safe by scientists risks prompting legal challenges from farm exporters like the United States, Canada and Argentina, Mandelson said. In a case brought by these three countries, the WTO ruled last year that a 1998-2004 EU ban on new genetically altered foods was illegal.

The bloc ended the six-year moratorium after tightening labeling rules and creating an agency to screen biotechnology applications. Since then, the EU has approved the import of some genetically modified products for food and feed use via a slow-track procedure and has yet to endorse requests for cultivation.

“If we fail to implement our own rules, or implement them inconsistently, we can – and probably will – be challenged,” Mandelson said.

He also said the EU might undermine European industries like livestock by falling behind in endorsing products in the global biotechnology crop market.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-country EU, faces resistance to genetically modified foods from some member states, including Austria and Greece, and from more than half of European consumers, according to surveys.

The EU biotechnology-food approvals since 2004 resulted from the commission acting on its own after member states failed to muster a majority for or against. The delays followed EU scientific opinions that the products were safe.

The commission aims for the EU to approve a request to plant a genetically modified potato developed by BASF, Barbara Helfferich, a commission environment spokeswoman, said. The approval would be the first EU authorization of a biotechnology product for cultivation in about eight years.

The Amflora potato, altered to increase its starch content, failed to win enough backing from member-state regulators in December and is going to EU ministers for a verdict and would go back to the commission for a decision should the ministers be split.

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