Reuters | by Patrick White
QUEBEC CITY - Canada said yesterday that problems affecting agriculture could only be settled through the World Trade Organisation and that those negotiations could only succeed if developing countries were involved.
Speaking to the North American/European Conference on Agriculture in Quebec City, Canadian Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief said that momentum in WTO agricultural negotiations had to be sustained.
"It's important that we try to sustain the momentum in WTO negotiations. This is a task that the Cairns Group of agricultural exporting nations has taken on and which Canada fully supports," Vanclief said, referring to last week's Cairns Group meeting in Banff, Alberta.
He said that the 1999 Seattle Conference failed because emerging countries were not involved.
At the meeting last week, ministers of the 18-country Cairns alliance claimed to have growing support in the Third World for their attempt to end what it believes were unfair restrictions and distortion on agricultural trade.
The group, which includes mid-level producing countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa and Brazil, was worried the European Union will use issues such as how farm animals are treated to replace traditional tariffs in restricting imports. The Cairns Group also expressed anger that animal welfare issues had become part of their trade fight with the European Union and the United States.
Vanclief said that animal welfare should not become a non-tariff barrier, and added he hoped that the overall agricultural negotiations round would not drag on - because jobs were at stake.
He said that more needed to be done to level the international playing field by ensuring the agreement reached in the current round of WTO reduces the disparities in financial support and protection among farmers in different countries.
Vanclief said Canada wanted the EU to remove non-tariff barriers on natural hormone beef and genetically modified organisms (GMO).
"They make decisions contrary to what science says. The WTO needs to have enough teeth so that type of type can't be allowed," the minister said.
He lashed out at the "devastating effect" of agricultural policies of the United States and the European Union, which now put farm support "at levels unseen since the mid-1980s".
"Our view is: it's not whether export subsidies can be eliminated, but when. It can't be too soon," the minister told delegates from Canada, the United States and the European Union.Reuters:
