The American Soybean Association (ASA) is being credited with playing a key role in defeating a ban in Poland that was to prohibit import, production and use of animal feed derived from biotech crops by August 12, 2008. Avoiding this ban prevented the disruption of U.S. soybean exports to the European Union (EU) generally, and exports of U.S. manufactured feed to Poland, worth $100 million annually.

"The GM feed ban was defeated by a coalition of the Polish Feed Millers, Poultry Association, and Pork Association, and U.S. trade associations, led by the American Soybean Association, and diplomatic representations including the Governments of the United States, Argentina, and Canada," reports Eric Wenberg, Agricultural Counselor in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) Office of Agricultural Affairs at the American Embassy in Warsaw.

"This success has also triggered a greater appreciation in Poland’s farm sector for starting a healthy, progressive debate on biotechnology, a key ASA objective in Europe," said ASA President John Hoffman, a soybean producer from Waterloo, Iowa. "Poland’s negative voting record in Brussels has contributed to the delays in approving new U.S. biotechnology crops for export."

The ASA, supported by FAS Warsaw, played a key role in defeating the ban as a spillover effect from the ASA’s work to highlight the problem of delayed EU approval of new biotechnology soybean varieties for use in animal feeds, the so-called "asynchronous approval problem."

"The educational activities of the American Soybean Association and FAS Warsaw helped Polish industry get the ammunition they needed to beat the feed ban and has left in place a coalition of contacts working hard to improve EU biotechnology policy generally," said Wenberg. "The feed ban would have jeopardized roughly $6.4 billion in Polish pork or poultry production, not including losses for feed compounders."

Teams representing ASA’s Biotech Advocacy and Education program visited Poland in October 2007 and February 2008 on itineraries organized in conjunction with FAS Warsaw to work with Polish importers and the feed industry on the asynchronous approval issue.

"This asynchronous problem, if left unsolved, could lead to the loss of an $800 million market for American soybeans in 2009, as delayed EU approvals of new biotech soybean events would mean these traits would not be authorized for import into EU member states," Wenberg said.

On July 27, 2008, just two weeks before a ban would have gone into effect, Poland’s President Lech Aleksander Kaczyński signed a law pushing back the introduction of a ban to 2013, effectively killing the legislation. Defeating the ban also benefited major U.S-based multinationals with investments in Polish agriculture that might have imploded without access to quality, cost-competitive feeds.

Since 2006, Poland has professed an official anti-biotech position, consistently opposes EU approval of new biotech products, and announced that Poland should be a "GM-free" country. The government banned the sale and registration of biotech seeds in mid-2006.

"Our success in Poland is a great example showing how the FAS and cooperators like ASA work together to open and maintain markets for U.S. agricultural exports," Hoffman said. "During the more than 50 years that ASA has been partnering with USDA to implement international marketing programs, the American Soybean Association has built worldwide recognition and an excellent reputation for helping our customers benefit from the quality and safety of U.S. soybeans and soybean products."