The American Soybean Association (ASA), a trade group representing 26,000 U.S. soybean farmers, supports the World Trade Organization (WTO) case against the European Union’s (EU) illegal five-year moratorium on approval of food and feed products enhanced through biotechnology. ASA salutes the efforts of the Bush Administration and is gratified that numerous other countries, including Australia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Uruguay, have joined in the complaint.

"In ASA’s view, it is critical that the United States develop a comprehensive strategy to improve the current international environment for trade in biotech crops and their products," said ASA President Dwain Ford, a soybean producer from Kinmundy, Ill. "This issue should not be viewed strictly as a U.S.-EU trade dispute since other countries also want to ensure that science-based determinations are applied to regulatory decisions."

On March 26, ASA testified before the House Committee on Agriculture calling for the Administration to immediately prepare and file WTO cases against the EU’s planned traceability and labeling, and novel food and feed regulations. ASA urged forceful action by the United States to discourage other countries that are considering following the EU’s example.

U.S. exports of soybeans and soybean products have been increasingly disrupted by the actions of the EU. Despite having approved Roundup® Ready soybeans in 1996, the EU enacted a mandatory "labeling" law two years later which requires food manufacturers to attach a stigmatizing "GMO label" on any food products containing more than one percent of Roundup Ready soybeans within that food’s soy protein ingredient component fraction. This has caused a large number of food manufacturers who market their products in the EU to switch-away from using U.S.-origin commodity soy protein as an ingredient, or to reformulate their products to exclude any soy ingredients, even soybean oil.

"While it had been hoped that progress was going to be made in lifting the moratorium, EU member states blocking approvals have indicated that they will not give approvals until the EU finalizes and begins implementing trade-restrictive traceability and labeling, and novel food and feed regulations," Ford said. "The United States and other exporting countries must not accept the imposition of one set of discriminatory and non-science-based measures by the EU as a condition for ending another non-science-based decision making process."

In addition to the anti-biotech labeling regime already in place in the EU, seven EU Member States have indicated they will refuse to implement biotech approvals in their national regulations until the traceability and labeling regulation is adopted. The European Commission has periodically protested the de facto moratorium implied by these policies, but has taken no legal or punitive action to enforce its own policies.

"In an effort to rationalize its inconsistent laws and member countries’ actions, the EU is preparing to adopt new regulations on mandatory tracing and mandatory labeling of biotech or biotech-derived products that would further restrict access for U.S. soybeans and soybean products," Ford said.

The EU’s proposed traceability regulation requires importers and food processors to trace biotech agricultural products and ingredients from farm to dinner table under a paperwork-intensive traceability and segregation regime. Compliance with this traceability regulation by U.S. exporters and food processors would be costly, onerous, and unworkable given the realities of bulk commodity production, marketing, transport, and food processing.

The EU’s proposed new traceability and labeling regulation requires that any shipment of agricultural commodities or any food product ingredient containing more than 0.9 percent biotech material be labeled as "containing biotech." Currently there also is discussion to further lower this threshold.

"The EU’s proposed regulation on Novel Food and Feed would be founded on the principle of process-based labeling rather than detection," Ford said. "In other words, it would not matter whether a product actually contains any biotech ingredients, but rather a product would have to be labeled as such simply because it was derived from biotechnology."

For example, the labeling requirements would extend to refined soybean oil made from biotech soybeans and processed products containing such soybean oil, even though no modified protein or DNA is present in refined soybean oil, and it is impossible to scientifically determine if such oil is of "biotech origin" or not. Such a situation would fly in the face of proper scientific and verifiable evaluation, and would leave the door wide open to misrepresentation and fraud.

"ASA’s net assessment of the EU’s proposals are that they are highly discriminatory and are so commercially infeasible that European food manufacturers and U.S. food manufacturers wanting to market their products in the EU would inevitably continue the trend to reformulate their products using non-U.S. sources of protein and vegetable oil," Ford said. "Soybean producers are extremely concerned about the status of international trade in the products of agricultural biotechnology and support this WTO action as necessary to champion the cause of a science-based regulatory approvals process."