Posted on 21-10-2002

Fat Chance For GE Food In EU
by John Vidal, Friday October 18, 2002, The Guardian

This morning several large biotechnology companies will dust off their
four-year-old applications to grow GM crops in Europe, and resubmit them to
the EU commission with a few additions. Another hurdle to their growing
them commercially has, technically, been overcome.

But there will be no champagne in the corporate boardrooms to celebrate EU
directive 2000/18, which became law yesterday after 18 months' delay. The
EU has not allowed any new GM food or crops to be licensed since 1998, and
the reality is that it will take at least another year before Monsanto,
Aventis, DuPont and other companies get approval for their crops, and far
longer than that before they are planted on a wide scale.

Despite the directive coming into force, Europe this week is as confused
and divided as ever about GM foods. After years of squabbling, wrangling
and disagreements, new proposals have been drawn up by the commission's
Danish presidency. They have come in two parts - food and animal feed, and
labelling and "traceability" - with the idea that together these will
provide better safety testing and consumer choice. With these planks in
place, the commission has thought, the way would be clear for the crops to
be authorised.

Fat chance. Europe's council of agricultural ministers met on Monday in
Luxembourg, and failed to agree. The commission had proposed that all food
containing more than 1% of GM products should be automatically labelled,
but Sweden insisted on "zero tolerance", Austria and Italy called for far
tighter limits, while France and others were in favour of the compromise.
The Danish presidency, keen to make progress on GM issues, also proposed
that individual states should be allowed temporarily to authorise the sale
of new GM products. This would have allowed small amounts of GM foods to be
sold in Europe for three years without being labelled. This, too, fell flat
- supported only by Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Spain, with other
countries pushing for a different system.

With the farm ministers having failed to reach agreement, the GM baton
passed yesterday to Europe's environment ministers to discuss labelling and
traceability. Last week there were strong rumours that they would take the
chance to propose lifting the effective moratorium on growing the crops.
But with far too much uncertainty on the major points of contention
addressed by their agricultural colleagues, and with issues of financial
and environmental liability barely touched on, they also got themselves
into a muddle and failed to agree.

The whole process will almost certainly now go forward to more meetings in
November, and then to conciliation. By then, Britain will be in the middle
of its debate and the food standards agency, which has largely informed
British policy, will be reconsidering its whole GM position. For the
companies and the European commission, the grindingly slow, impossibly
twisting European road to legal acceptance of the crops gets ever more
bogged down. The companies claim they have lost $12bn (£7.7bn) of sales in
the past four years, and the commission is now coming under mounting
pressure from impatient US trade officials. Everyone in the commission
wants the US off its back and an end to the whole vexed affair.

The commission has tried to raise the stakes and has lately pushed Irish
health and consumer affairs commissioner David Byrne to argue that people
are now ready to accept the foods, and that Europe must act to
prevent the biotechnology field being hindered "by emotional reaction and
apprehension". He and others have played up threats of a trade war with the
US in order to influence ministers and voters, but few people believe that
the World Trade Organisation will want to act before the European political
process has been exhausted - probably in 2004.

The companies are prepared to hang in because the European market is so
large and potentially lucrative, but their patience is wearing thin. They
accept that even if member states do eventually agree on regulatory
labelling and all the other outstanding issues in the next year, some
countries may never allow them to be grown commercially for domestic
political reasons. Like the euro, GM may never be acceptable in some
countries. It is a war of attrition, with both sides saying that time is on
their side and putting on a show of optimism. The companies believe that
the political momentum in favour of the crops is now building and that
governments are getting fidgety. They say that farm groups, which just four
years ago were not interested, are now asking them for the technology and
say that consumers are less hostile. Their best hope now is that, as more
countries around the world pass legislation allowing the crops to be grown
and sold, so Europe will become politically and technologically isolated.
It will not be long, they say, before many more European politicians start
shouting for the continent to catch up with the likes of China and India.
Given Europe's strong consumer protection laws, they believe consumers will
eventually come to trust the foods,
and that member states will have no scientific or social excuse left to
stop them. But they also know that even when European politicians do reach
agreement, the decision on whether to let farmers grow the crops will
eventually come down to national politics, and any country will still be
able to say no.

Unfortunately for the companies and the commission, the formidable
coalition of national and international environment, consumer,
developmentand faith groups which vehemently opposed the introduction of
the crops four years ago has not disappeared and is confident of being able
to crank up concerted opposition whenever it has to. By then, directive
2000/18 may be only dimly remembered.