US Shifts Tactics in GMO Clash with EU Washington Hopes Diplomatic Efforts Would Isolate Europe And Change Global Attitude - Edward Alden and Michael Man, Financial Times, October 15, 2002 The clash between the US and the European Union over the safety of genetically-modified foods was supposed to come to a head this week. The US had long warned that it would launch a World Trade Organisation challenge if the EU did not lift its four-year-old de facto moratorium on approving GM corn and other crops already deemed safe by the EU's top scientists. The result would be a titanic trade struggle pitting the US, its farmers and biotech companies against the EU, wary consumers and host of environmental lobby groups out to rid the world of what they deem as "Frankenstein foods". But though new rules come into force this Thursday which the European Commission hopes will help to restart the approvals process, some EU member states are still refusing to lift the ban. And, surprisingly, the US is unlikely to do anything about it. While US officials say they remain extremely frustrated with European opposition to GM foods, the administration has been reconsidering its WTO threats. Instead, Washington has been quietly engaging in a complex diplomatic effort aimed at isolating Europe and changing global attitudes towards GM foods. Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, is trying to "pull this out of the US-EU bilateral context and make it into a global issue", said Nao Matsukata, until recently USTR director of policy planning. The shift in tactics is subtle, and possibly reversible. Washington remains angry at the loss of potential exports of corn to Europe worth around Dollars 300m (Euros 303m, Pounds 192m) every year. US officials say there is still a heated internal debate on whether to bring a WTO case. "There's a principle here," said a senior trade official. "I don't think it sends the right message to countries that would like to put up regulatory trade barriers - for whatever arbitrary, non-scientific reason they decide - to not challenge these sort of behaviours." But European officials say that they too are detecting a softening in the US stance. "In August, the signal we were getting was that a swift dose of WTO action would be a good thing," said one diplomat. "Now there's a certain amount of optimism that they will hold off as long as some progress is made in the meantime with the approvals process," he said. David Byrne, the EU's health and consumer protection commissioner, wants to get the approvals system going again as soon as possible. However, most member governments insist that stringent rules must first be approved on tracing and labelling GM products. EU agriculture ministers failed yesterday to make progress on new rules and hopes that the environment ministers would reach an initial accord on Thursday on labelling have now faded, making an early end to the moratorium unlikely. "We're not talking about suddenly flooding the EU market with new GMOs," says an EU official. "All that's needed is a statement of intent from the Commission during October that it's willing to do something. That would keep the US off our backs, even if it took a long time for any new GMOs to actually get approved." The US wariness about a WTO case comes primarily from fears of triggering an angry backlash. Mr Zoellick has worked hard to defuse the anti-globalisation protests by, for instance, supporting changes to WTO patent rules to allow cheaper Aids drugs to reach Africa. A WTO case could reignite charges that the US is using trade rules to foist what critics charge are unsafe products on to unwilling countries. "I don't think he's going to risk that," said Mr Matsukata. At the same time, the US believes it is starting to isolate the Europeans internationally on the issue. "I think there is a detectable shift in sentiment," said a US agriculture official. "Countries are beginning to realise that what the Europeans are doing is going overboard." The US points to China and several other Asian countries softening their opposition to GM foods. Even the recent case where famine-ravaged Zambia refused to allow imports of US-grown GM corn may rebound in Washington's favour. "Countries that are literally on the verge of starvation are turning down food because they're afraid of the impact it might have on their relationship with Europe," said the senior trade official. "I think in the long run the backlash will be more against the Europeans than us on food aid," said the US agriculture official. Despite such optimism, there is nonetheless a growing recognition in Washington that, regardless of US pressure, Europe is unlikely to welcome GM foods any time soon. "There's no market here anyway; the Greens have seen to that," says a Commission official. "Just look at how many supermarkets have removed GM ingredients from their own-brand products and are using that as a marketing tool." According to Lorenzo Consoli of Greenpeace, which has spearheaded the anti-GMO campaign in Europe: "The market is locked to GM (foods) not because of the moratorium but because people reject them."