Reuters | September 21, 1999 | By Eric Onstad
ROTTERDAM - The U.S. government should actively support industry efforts to segregate genetically modified (GM) crops to diffuse consumer opposition in Europe, the head of a Dutch grain trade group said.
Once consumers face sharply higher prices for foods without GM inputs, most are likely to opt for foods not specified as GM free, said Rudolf Hoeffelman, chairman of the Royal Dutch Grain and Feed Trade Association.
Hoeffelman, former president of the Benelux division of U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill, said he recently told U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Cynthia Schneider that current U.S. policy on GM foods was not working.
It was unclear what premiums would be demanded for large volumes of non-GM supplies but some people have mentioned 10-20 percent, he added in an interview.
Trying to convince European consumers that GM foods were safe would be very difficult, Hoeffelman told Schneider during an informal session about the GM issue about two weeks ago in Rotterdam.
"Basically what I said was winning your way is almost impossible and puts trade and industry in a very difficult position," he said.
RESEARCH SUPPORTS GM SAFETY
Officials in the United States, where GM crops are widely accepted, argue that research supports the safety of GM crops and any moves by Europeans to put the brakes on such foods amount to unfair trade practices.
But Europeans' confidence in food safety has been severely undermined following the mad cow crisis in Britain and the dioxin affair in Belgium this year.
Earlier this month, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM.N) surprised the trade and farmers by warning grain suppliers to begin segregating GM modified corn, soybeans and other crops from conventional ones.
This year GM crops are estimated to account for about 35 percent of U.S. corn and 55 percent of soybeans. Europe imported about 16 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans last year.
LET THE CONSUMER DECIDE
"You can't ram it down peoples' throats. If people don't want it, if they say we want it segregated, let the consumer make the choice, that's a very reasonable argument," Hoeffelman said.
Favouring segregation of GM crops does not translate into opposition to GM crops, but is a practical reaction to the stalemate between the United States and Europe, he added.
The grain and shipping industries would struggle on their own to create viable systems to separate GM and non-GM crops and might not gain the confidence of consumers without official cooperation, Hoeffelman said.
"So the best thing would be if the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), directed by Washington, would cooperate with this," he said.
Any move to segregate non-GM crops throws up a host of problems, such as proving that crops had not been inadvertently cross-pollinated by GM crops.
Coming up with quick and economic testing methods was another challenge in the move to satisfy consumers' demand for non-GM foods.
In the long run, the EU must create a single food safety agency along the lines of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Hoeffelman said.
There must be a broad-based scientific review of all the evidence on GM crops, with testing coordinated between Washington and Brussels, he added.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
