A victory for the biotech oligopoly
A recent ruling by the World Trade Organization (WTO) is excellent news for large agribusiness companies like Monsanto, Dow, Chemical, DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer. From a longer perspective, it also looks like good news for food processors Kraft and Kellogg, as well as a number of US and Brazilian farmers.
The ruling struck down the ability of individual European Union nations to ban the import of genetically modified (GM) food, unless based on certain scientific evidence. It also criticizes the EU for dragging its feet on approving GM products for import. In other words, the safety and health concerns of European consumers over long-term effects of the crops take a back seat to the imperatives of global trade. In the US half of the corn and soybean crops are now genetically modified, and GM crops are grown a score of other countries.
The results of the ruling are not likely to be immediate. Europe is not a major importer of US corn and soybeans. But the European stance has slowed the development and widespread adoption of genetically modified wheat, rice, and potatoes, by limiting the markets for these products. The thinking is also that other countries that plan to resist GM crops might fall in line.
But the ruling is a defeat for the resistance movement against GM foods. The next step is changing European labeling restrictions. As a New York Times story ("Trade Ruling Is Expected to Favor Biotech Food". 2/6/06) notes
Europe approved new rules in 2003 that require foods with genetically modified ingredients to be labeled and the ingredients to be traceable to the farm on which they were grown. Food companies in Europe and America, worried that such a label will turn away consumers, avoid biotech ingredients…. The grocery manufacturers and other American industry groups are urging the government to file a new W.T.O. complaint against the labeling and traceability rules.
The advantages of the WTO rulings are, as they often are, are in the direct interest of major global corporations, at the expense of smaller local interests. It's not a matter of US versus Europe versus Asia as WTO rulings have at various times been used by all three areas to gain advantage. But the WTO's secretive, arbitrary, and binding decisions are shaped by a desire to increase global access to trade, and that bias almost always favors oligopolies in every industry.
