Los Angeles Times | Reuters | November 20, 1999 | MATTHEW GREEN
PARIS - U.S. and European Union farmers' representatives speaking at a Paris debate on Saturday were cited as urging the World Trade Organization (WTO) to adopt clear rules on global trade in genetically modified foods and that a reluctance among EU governments to allow imports of gene-modified food from the United States could stymie WTO talks this month in Seattle.
David King, secretary general of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, an umbrella group for farmers' unions around the world, was quoted as saying, "We see biotechnology coming up as a potential trade barrier, It's a political agenda, not a scientific agenda."
Alex Jackson of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents more than 4.6 million farms, was cited as saying that the EU's reluctance to approve their crop strains amounted to a trade barrier, albeit one that did not use the traditional means of slapping tariffs on imports, adding, "It's absolutely a non-tariff barrier."
Speaking on the fringes of a conference organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, he said that environmental groups often mislead consumers over GMOs.
A Greenpeace International representative was cited as saying that GMOs could have unpredictable effects on health and nature and added that the WTO was not equipped to settle environmental issues, adding, "This is an environmental issue, not a trade issue."
