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The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) has praised the recent decision by the Bush administration to pursue a case in the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the European Union's (EU) five-year-old moratorium on new approvals of biotech crops.

"The administration's decision to pursue formal dispute settlement proceedings under the WTO sends a strong message to farmers that the U.S. government will fight for agriculture's trading rights," said AFBF President Bob Stallman.

"We believe that a WTO decision, which most experts expect to be in favor of the United States, is the only reasonable remedy available to U.S. growers – to either lift the moratorium or impose retaliatory tariffs on EU products imported into the United States," Stallman asserted.

The EU's "ongoing and illegal" moratorium, noted Stallman, has resulted in lost export markets for U.S. producers and exporters, a slowdown in the adoption of new technologies in the United States and other countries, and increased production and testing costs for U.S. agricultural interests. Since its implementation in October 1998, the moratorium has cost the United States about $300 million a year in corn exports to EU countries. About a third of the U.S. corn crop is genetically modified, as is about 70 percent of the cotton crop and three-quarters of the soybean crop. The EU has proposed the use of labeling and traceability rules to replace the moratorium, a move that Stallman said is also inconsistent with WTO rules. "As proposed, the labeling and traceability rules only make the problem worse by erecting new, unscientific barriers to processed food products in addition to agricultural commodities," he said.

"This is not an issue based on scientific uncertainty," Stallman explained. "All of the facts, even from European research, firmly support the safety of biotech products. It's simply the failure of EU political leadership to adhere to the terms of a world trade agreement. That failure hurts U.S. farmers, and that's unacceptable."