Science Magazine | February 4, 2000 | Laura Helmuth
After 5 years of bitter negotiations, delegates from 130 countries finally hammered out a global treaty that will govern the trade of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The treaty formalizes the process by which countries can refuse to accept biotech products, an apparent blow to the biotech industry. Even so, both proponents and critics of biotechnology came away from the negotiating table at 5:00 a.m. in Montreal on 29 January claiming victory.
One reason for the unexpected compromise may be that the wording of the new treaty is decidedly ambiguous. For instance, the treaty allows countries to refuse to import GMOs based on a "precautionary principle" -- that is, even without "sufficient scientific evidence" that the products could cause environmental harm or threaten human health. Elsewhere, however, the treaty stipulates that such rejections be based on "credible" scientific evidence.
The treaty focuses on living modified organisms such as seeds and fish that can colonize an ecosystem. It calls for the creation of a clearinghouse for information about such GMOs. Exporters will be required to register new products with the database, which will be run by the United Nations, and provide scientific information about how they were created and tested. Exporters must also seek permission from importing countries to ship the new products the first time.
At issue is the safety of GMOs, a topic that has pitted the United States, Canada, and a few other agriculture-exporting countries against the GMO-wary European Union (E.U.) and most developing countries. Asserting that GMOs are safe and a valuable tool for agriculture, the U.S.-dominated team, known as the Miami group, agitated for relatively unrestricted trade in GMOs.
"The Miami group got virtually everything it wanted," asserts Val Giddings of the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington, D.C. Giddings points out, for example, that the treaty excludes pharmaceuticals, in which the United States has a major stake, and it will not supercede trade agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encourages relatively unhindered trade of GMOs.
Biotech opponents read the results differently. "The U.S. lost on most major issues," counters Philip L. Bereano of The Council for Responsible Genetics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Miami group drafted wording that would have allowed the WTO to overrule the biosafety treaty, he says; putting the two agreements on equal footing is seen as a victory by GMO opponents. And Bereano says it is a vindication that the environmentalists' darling, the precautionary principle, is written into the agreement.
The treaty puts off for 2 years the issue that kept the U.S. and E.U. at each other's throats until early morning in Montreal: whether to include the trade of GMOs that are not likely to propagate in the environment. The treaty states that such "commodity" GMOs intended for food or feed must be labeled "may contain" GMOs. But it does not require exporters to segregate GMO-containing products from traditional products. Some countries and companies already refuse GMO products and pay a premium for nonmodified crops -- a market process that is likely to continue until the parties meet again in 2002.Science Magazine:
