WTO Faults EU for Blocking Modified Food

[NashVegas]

Here's one that apparently got missed in yesterday's LBN:

The World Trade Organization has upheld a ruling that European countries broke international trade rules by stopping imports of genetically modified foods, officials said Thursday.

The WTO's verdict, handed out confidentially late Wednesday, found that the European Union had an effective ban on biotech foods for six years from 1998. The WTO sided with the United States and two other countries who said the moratorium was illegal under the commerce body's rules, according to officials who have reviewed the report.

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Peter Power, spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, told reporters in Brussels that he could not comment on the ruling, but noted that the complainants did not challenge the EU's current regulatory framework.
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But Washington has said it will continue with its WTO case until it is convinced that all applications for approval are being decided on scientific rather than political grounds.

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The Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said that if the ruling remained unchanged in its final publication, it would likely be used as a legal tool against biotech bans also passed in several Asian and African WTO member countries, and even in a few U.S. counties.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-WTO-Biotech.html


Buggers.