Defending a Vanishing Moratorium: GMOs and the WTO

Presentation by IUF to the seminar "A Trans-Atlantic GMO Trade War: US
attempts to use the WTO Against European citizens"

London, October 15, 2004

My name is Peter Rossman. I am the Communications Director for the IUF, an
international trade union federation representing workers' trade unions
along the food chain. We represent some 12 million workers in agriculture
and plantations, food processing, and hotels and restaurants organized
in 351 trade unions in 124 countries.

GMOs are clearly an issue for the labour movement and for the IUF because
they are about rights, power and control. GMOs are a tool, probably the
most powerful one yet invented, for consolidating the grip of the
transnational agrifood corporations on the global food chain.

They are a corporate attack on the environment and biodiversity, an attack
on food security and food sovereignty, an attack on the rights of workers
and consumers.

In Argentina, farmworkers are now applying undiluted glyphosate and
attacking Roundup-resistant super-weeds with axes. After the harvest the
fields are sprayed with paraquat, which is one of the most toxic herbicides
on the market (and which the Commission has recently lifted restrictions on
in Europe!). This is the inevitable result of a decade of GMO cultivation.

Pioneer Hi-Bred, the world's largest seed corporation, is currently testing
a GMO maize which is six-times more
resistant to glyphosate than Monsanto's Roundup ready variety. The plant is
programmed to degrade the herbicide it absorbs, and can sustain non-stop
herbicide application. The threat to workers and to human health and the
environment is obvious.

I read the EU submission in response to the US complaint very carefully and
there is NO mention of the impact of GMOs on the health and safety of
agricultural workers with respect to pesticides or any other aspect of
production.

So what can unions bring to the campaign to get GMOs out of Europe and keep
it GMO free? Workers can and do participate as individuals in
consumer-based movements against GMOs, but through their unions they engage
directly with the companies, through the collective bargaining process.

Unions can negotiate collective bargaining agreements which commit food
processing companies to GMO-free production. This increases pressure on the
seed companies which are promoting them, the TNCs which are processing them
and on national and supranational political bodies.

These kinds of agreements need to be extended and multiplied, and need to
be backed with increased consumer pressure on the producing companies to
commit themselves to GMO free production. This is one way we can strengthen
public opinion in support of a moratorium, split the employers on this
issue and stiffen political resistance. The companies - from agricultural
to retail - have to become a primary target for anti-GMO campaigns, and we
will try to educate and mobilize our members to play their part. It would
be very helpful if groups outside the labour movement could be sensitive to
our concerns as trade unionists and integrate the arguments I've made here
into their own public campaigning.

Now I would like to specifically address the question of unions and the WTO
complaint. One of the pillars of the US complaint is the use it makes of
the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, which excludes
"production processes and production methods" from trade rules. This means
that the social, health and safety, environmental and political conditions
under which goods are produced are deemed irrelevant. Commodities with the
same characteristics must be treated as "equivalent" products under
national and sub-national laws and regulations. This applies also to
labelling requirements, which can be treated as discriminatory.

Separating the production process and the products means denying the right
to know what is in a product and how it was produced.  This exclusion is a
direct challenge to the labour movement's entire history of struggle.
Unions have always fought for products to be judged according to the
conditions under which they were produced.

We have to challenge the rules of the WTO, and this is what the Commission
is unwilling and unable to do. Europe's own agrofood companies have done
very well under the existing rules - consider for example the subsidies
issue - and Europe's own biotech industry, which opposed the moratorium and
worked hard to undermine it, is eagerly waiting to cash in on new approvals
for its own GMO products. The Commission's defense against the WTO is
contradictory because it is under conflicting pressures - from consumers,
who reject GMOs, and from the US government and its own biotech industry,
who seek to impose them.

The EU submission on the US case essentially argues that there never was a
moratorium, and if there was selective refusal of particular GMO products
it was WTO compatible. This simply won't wash. The Commission can't and
won't fight for a real moratorium, and this is the fundamental problem we
have to address. Europe's own biotech industry would like to see a decision
in favor of the US, which means that we have to fight on two fronts. The
fact that the Commissioners were prepared to vote last month in favor of
seed regulations which would have legalized GMO contamination of
conventional seed stocks shows just how weak is the political will within
the EU institutions to fight for the kind of regulations and laws we need
to keep out GMOs. Authorizations on specific GMO crops shouldn't be made by
the Commission in any event - this is actually a matter for the ministers
to decide, but they prefer to abstain from taking the necessary decisions
and let the Commission do the dirty work.

We've seen a similar process at work in North America, where both the
Canadian and the US governments have been ready and willing to lose
corporate challenges under the NATA dispute resolution procedures aimed at
getting rid of environmental legislation in particular states which the
federal governments were unwilling to defend.

So I think in summing up that two lessons emerge from this. First, that we
have to work even harder to increase the effectiveness of nationally-based
campaigns against GMOs, to ensure that the voice of European citizens and
workers who reject GMOs translates more effectively into national and
European-level political decisions which
can defeat the biotech and corporate lobby on this issue. If we can't do
this, Europe's own GMO lobby will subvert the institutions and processes
which are supposed to be defending us.

Second, we have to transform the debate on GMOs and lift it out of the
narrow confines of the WTO rules and the false issue of WTO-compatibility.
The Commission's own submission actually contains a hint of this when it
says "There is a serious question as to whether the WTO is the appropriate
international forum for resolving all the
GMO issues that the Complainants have raised in these cases."

This is really the essence of the issue. For the IUF, WTO rules which would
restrict or ban labelling requirements and limit restrictions or bans on
GMOs are in violation of international human rights instruments which in
fact require states to take such measures to defend the health and safety
of their citizens and protect the environment.

The Biosafety Protocol to the International Convention on Biodiversity,
which entered into effect last year, provides a basis in international law
for rejecting GMO imports and their release into the environment. But since
it is based on the precautionary principle, it can only be enforced over
and against the WTO. A key question for our movement now is how to make
effective use of the Protocol and other human rights instruments to build
an effective defense against the corporate aggression embodied in the US
complaint as well as to defend against Europe's own biotech industry and
their political proxies.