Reuters | November 26, 1999
LONDON - Concern is growing about the adequacy of World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules for trading genetically modified (GM) sugar beet, the International Sugar Organization said in a report.
It said that in some countries, notably European, worries about health and the environment had escalated into "GM hysteria," delaying the introduction of rules for the production and marketing of GM crops.
The millennium round of WTO talks, due to start in Seattle on Monday, provided a forum to settle the trade-related issues raised by the development of GM commodities and food products.
"Generally, it is a question of protectionism," the report said, adding that global GM standards were needed as well as a system for settling GM trade disputes.
One solution could be mutual recognition agreements for national GM approval systems, it said.
GM sugar beet was seen by producers as important for improving disease resistance, productivity and quality so as to reduce costs.
In the United States GM sugar beet had been marketed for the first time in 1999 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved Liberty Link beet developed by AgrEvo, a joint venture between Germany's Hoechst AG and Schering AG, to tolerate glufosinate herbicide.
It had also approved Monsanto Co's Roundup Ready sugar beet, which also resisted glyphosate herbicide.
But in the EU, GM-beet approval was still some way off due to the strength of public resistance.
"The likelihood of consumers responding favourably or even indifferently to sugar produced from GM beet therefore must be questionable for the time being," the report said.
Commercial varieties of GM cane for tropical countries were still some two to three years away.
The ISO report said producers could calm consumer fears over GM beet or cane by emphasising that white sugar was almost a pure food product as it was 99.9 percent sucrose.
"No DNA material can be identified as the result of genetic manipulation," the report said.
But it added that farmers were unlikely to adopt GM beet or other GM crops until beyond 2000 due to opposition from consumer groups and environmentalists.
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