Agence France Presse | February 17, 2004
Britain fired a shot across the bows of the United States over genetically-modified (GM) food as environment ministers from around 70 countries prepared to meet here Wednesday on preserving the diversity of life on earth.
Although the touchy issue of GM food and crops is not on the agenda for the two-day ministerial meeting, it will be a focus of follow-up talks next week and Britain's Environment Minister Elliot Morley made it clear that London plans to take a firm stand.
"The US has to understand there is enormous sensitivity about genetically-modified food. The US has also to understand we would not give blanket approval (to GM food products). There is no chance of that whatsoever," he told AFP Wednesday.
Europe and the US are already locking horns over GM crops in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where Washington is contesting the European Union's de-facto embargo on importing and planting bio-engineered food.
In a preparatory move towards an expected easing of these restrictions, EU nations have passed tough laws on identifying and labelling food that has GM ingredients, infuriating the US.
"The bottomline must be consumer choice," said Morley. "We do have a number of GM food ingredients which are approved in the UK and they must be labled and that will be extended to any GM products."
The EU wants the meeting here to follow its line for exports of GM commodities -- wheat, corn and soya are the main ones -- while Washington says GM crops are safe and wants minimal labelling requirements.
The ministers are in the Malaysian capital for the "high-level" segment of the seventh conference of parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which has drawn some 2,000 government officials, scientists and activists to Kuala Lumpur.
The CBD, ratified by 187 countries and the European Union, aims to protect the diversity of plant and animal life on earth from the ravages of human development.
The GM foods issue will come up at a meeting here next week of parties to the Biosafety Protocol, a legally binding offshoot of the CBD which deals with transboundary movements of genetically-modified organisms.
A Malaysian official said the ministers at the CBD conference would focus on the role of scientific assessment on biodiversity decision making, the transfer of technology and the introduction of international rules governing access to natural resources.Agence France Presse:
