Reuters | January 5, 2000
OXFORD, England - The European Union needs an organisation similar to the U.S.'s Food and Drug Administration to instill consumer confidence in genetically modified foods and help avoid transatlantic trade spats, U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary Gus Schumacher said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the annual Oxford Farming Conference, Schumacher said U.S. consumers' satisfaction with genetically modified foods was mainly due to their confidence in the FDA's scientific findings.
"We need to work with science and set up a science-based system on these very important products," Schumacher said. "It is so important to work with Europe on these science-based approaches for a more rational food safety programme."
Beef, bananas and biotechnology are the three major sticking points in U.S.-EU trade relations. The banana issue is one of food trade policy, but differences over beef hormones and genetically modified food are based on differing approaches to food safety.
The EU's refusal to comply with the World Trade Organisation and lift its ban on U.S. hormone-treated beef has led to the imposition of 100 percent tariffs on EU exports valued at $116.8 million, Schumacher said.
Genetically modified foods, in particular soya and maize produced in the U.S., have been slow to gain acceptance by a European food industry wary of consumer fears.
"Decisions (on food safety) have to be made on the basis of science and the evidence not on politics and fear," he told reporters after his speech.
U.K. agriculture minister Nick Brown, referring to France's continued ban on British beef, in his speech called on France to accept the science and allow imports.
He said he fell back on scientific evidence when under pressure to ban exports of French meat contaminated with sewage.
"There was no risk to human health and there was no reason to ban it," Brown told reporters.
Several European Union countries have already lent their support to the concept of an EU food standards agency. At a national level France already has such an agency, while Britain plans to introduce one this year.
The European Commission is due to bring out proposals on food safety in mid-January, including the outline of any EU-wide agency. EU officials have hinted that the agency might possibily take the form of coordination among national agencies rather than a new EU-level bureaucracy.
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