Washington

The European Union (EU) and the United States have taken a small step back from a possible trade war over genetically modified foods.

In negotiations in Yokohama, Japan, which ended on 8 March, representatives from the two sides reached a compromise on how such foods should be monitored. They have just over a year left to reach agreement on other issues, such as how the foods should be labelled for consumers.

The negotiations were part of a three-year plan to update the Codex Alimentarius, the food-safety standards used by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to settle trade disputes. In Yokohama, the United States dropped its earlier resistance to a system to monitor the movement and health risks of transgenic crops.

The EU currently bans the farming of about 30 US transgenic crop varieties and the importation of foodstuffs containing them. Their suppliers want the United States to file a complaint about the ban with the WTO — but diplomats on both sides hope that such action can be averted by updating the Codex rules.

Alan Randall, secretary of the Rome-based Codex commission, warns that the argument is far from over. The two sides are still divided, for instance, over how to deal with foods that are obtained from transgenic plants but which do not themselves contain transferred genes. The EU wants consumers to be told if the food is from a genetically modified source.

Negotiations on such disagreements are scheduled to be completed before a Rome meeting of the Codex commission in July 2003. Randall says there is a long road ahead, but is pleased that an agreement has been reached. “At least the two parties are no longer just shouting at each other,” he says.

→ http://www.codexalimentarius.net