Reuters | October 8, 1999
BRUSSELS - Tim Galvin, a senior official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was cited as telling an Agra Europe conference in Brussels that the European Union's regulatory approach to genetically modified crops is slow, unpredictable and overtly motivated by political considerations, adding, "The EU regulatory process has been problematic from the beginning. This uncertainty has made it difficult to do business with and within the EU."
He added that delays in product approval and vague and loosely defined labelling requirements were the main problems, stating, "Political pressure to block products of biotechnology has increased in a number of EU countries; member state objections to individual products have become the norm, and the process has ground to a halt."
As a result U.S. corn growers had last year lost some $200 million of export sales and faced similar losses in 1999.
Simon Barber of EuropaBio, a trade group which speaks for biotechnology companies in Europe was quoted as saying, "This piece of legislation is not working. The procedure is not very transparent and people don't know what is going on. Products are going in for three or four years and not coming out the other end."
Galvin argued that it was not just the United States that was advocating biotechnology in food production.
European companies were carrying out a lot of research into the subject and half of all products awaiting EU regulatory approval were sponsored by European countries.
