The American Soybean Association (ASA) is taking a wait and see position toward the Biosafety Protocol recently completed in Montreal, Canada. In the view of the ASA, the accord has several positive provisions, as well as a few areas of potential concern.

"Commodity soybean trade will go on largely as it does today," said ASA Chairman Mike Yost, a soybean and corn producer from Murdock, Minn. "Contrary to what some groups would like you to believe, the Biosafety Protocol includes no requirements for segregation, and no procedures for requiring pre-approval of biotech commodities in countries that do not already have regulations governing the products of biotechnology."

The Biosafety Protocol recognizes that crop biotechnology has an important role that will help to improve human well being, and the participating countries explicitly recognized that biotech commodities pose minimal risk to biodiversity. The Biosafety Protocol also preserves the rights and the obligations of countries to base their decisions on sound scientific principles as delineated under the sanitary and phytosanitary provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"The Biosafety Protocol does not specifically require countries to label biotech crops or to place labels on products containing biotech ingredients," Yost said. "When the Protocol does take effect, probably in two years at the earliest, it calls for shipping documentation to accompany bulk commodities that may include crops derived through biotechnology. This would serve to advise the importing country that the shipment "may contain" biotech varieties, and that the shipment is for processing into food and feed products, not for planting. Processed commodity products, such as soybean meal and oil, are exempt from any and all requirements under the Biosafety Protocol."

ASA anticipates that the notification of regulations and the reporting of approval decisions to the Biosafety Clearing House mechanism, as proposed under the Biosafety Protocol, have the potential to increase the objectivity for the approval of biotech crops and should encourage harmonization of risk assessment criteria in national regulations throughout the world. The Biosafety Protocol also allows U.S. farmers to earn premiums for producing Identity Preserved non-biotech crops for customers who want these products and are willing to pay extra for them.

ASA is concerned about the potential implications of the "precautionary principle," which leaves open the possibility that countries could take action to halt imports without any compelling scientific data to support their action. ASA believes the inclusion of the precautionary principle could undermine the WTO’s current science-based system of risk assessment that is essential for objective safety decisions. This gives rise to concerns that some nations will attempt to abuse the precautionary principle as a means to disguise trade barriers.

"ASA is also concerned about the additional amount of paperwork and expense associated with documentation of shipments," Yost said. "This could become an even greater burden on the whole commodity system a couple of years down the road if proposed rules are implemented that could require identification of each different variety of biotech crop contained in every shipment."