Agence France Presse | July 8, 2003
The European Union's top trade representative warned the United States Tuesday it would fail if it went to the World Trade Organization to challenge recent EU legislation requiring genetically modified food to carry labels.
"I would advise them (US officials) against taking such a step for one simple reason," EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy told members of the European Parliament's environment committee.
"They have every chance of losing this case if they go after our legislation on genetically modified organism labelling.
"The likelihood of their losing, in addition to the impact it would have on them if they lost, would normally be something that would dissuade them."
But Lamy said he had received no indication that Washington was changing its approach from challenging an EU moratorium on biotech food imports to contesting the labelling legislation.
The United States is currently leading a group of a dozen countries in a WTO challenge to the moratorium, which the EU adopted in the face of questions surrounding the safety and environmental impact of genetically modified products.
The European Parliament last week adopted two new directives requiring foods and animal feed to be labelled if the content of genetically modified ingredients exceeds 0.9 percent.
The EU said the labelling initiative opened the way to a removal of the import moratorium, which has been in place since 1999.
But the US government and farmers reacted angrily to the legislation, insisting it was unworkable and would further hinder US-EU agricultural trade.Agence France Presse:
