Safety may get in the way of US trade

By COLIN JAMES

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) could be the source of the next big trade dispute between the United States and Australia and New Zealand, a senior American official says.

Emil Skodon, State Department director of Australian and New Zealand affairs, told a conference in Baltimore on relations between the United States and the two Tasman countries on Wednesday that there was a risk Australia and New Zealand would "impose regulations that distort trade without distorting safety".

He welcomed the three-month delay (announced on 22 October) on the introduction of the Australian and New Zealand Food Authority's (ANZFA) draft proposals for mandatory labelling of genetically modified food or food that might contain genetically modified ingredients.

"The technology has progressed more quickly than public understanding of the technology," he said. That had given rise to fears and agitation for Government intervention.

Mandatory labelling would have been badly received in the United States. The US Food and Drug Administration, which imposed strict standards, focused on the nutritional elements, composition and any new allergens and required the change to be identified, whereas the ANZFA proposal would have required the identification of the process involved.

"That would be an almost un-meetable standard," Mr Skodon said.

"It would have amounted to a trade barrier against our agricultural sector." The trade impact would have been "potentially huge" because genetic modification had been a "massive", if little noticed, revolution in America.

The need now was for careful scientific study. The way to find answers was through some multilateral process, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the United Nations' biosafety protocol being developed or the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a United Nations body responsible for formulating food safety standards to protect human health, or a combination of those.

The alternative was a hotchpotch of standards which would function as non-tariff barriers.

Mr Skodon said he hoped that the next WTO round would broaden the rules on agriculture and "substantially reduce" trade-distorting support mechanisms and subsidies.

Of the so-called P5 initiative to link the United States, Singapore, Chile, Australia and New Zealand, in which President Clinton expressed some interest during his visit in September, Mr Skodon said American officials' trade negotiating energy was heavily taken up with the Seattle meeting which limited the amount of attention it could be given at the moment.