Unjustified negative attitudes about agricultural biotechnology are contributing to the ongoing famine in southern Africa and harming U.S. agricultural trade, a senior U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official says.

In December 16 remarks before a biotechnology forum at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, David Hegwood, USDA special counsel, said biotechnology is "one of the brightest hopes for improving food production in Africa" and decreasing hunger.

But, he said, fears that Europe will reject food exports if they contain some biotechnology has led Zimbabwe, one of the countries suffering from famine, to refuse U.S. food aid, which primarily is maize that may contain grain derived from biotechnology.

Further, Hegwood said, some countries are refusing to import U.S. maize and soybeans because a growing number of third countries are requiring the labeling of foods that may contain biotech ingredients. The United States does not segregate biotech from non-biotech crops because there is no scientific evidence to indicate that commercially available biotech commodities and processed foods are less safe than their conventional counterparts, according to a State Department fact sheet.

A recent "troubling development" in agricultural trade involves U.S. food manufacturers moving production facilities to other countries and using non-U.S. food ingredients to avoid the labeling required by the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, Hegwood said. "They, too, are afraid of the European attitudes toward biotechnology," he said.

Hegwood blamed European governments for not acting "responsibly" in adopting labeling rules and for keeping in place a moratorium on approvals of new foods derived from biotechnology -- both of which are serving as trade barriers.

He said European governments are interfering in the marketplace by imposing costly regulations on the food system. Mandatory labeling already is causing higher consumer prices and stifling farmers' use of innovation in Europe, he said.

Hegwood urged governments to maintain a distinction between health and safety issues and consumer information issues. "Mandatory process-based labeling is not a health and safety issue, and it is a grave mistake for governments to allow consumers to believe that it is. Doing so undermines consumer confidence in the regulatory system," he added.

Regulations to protect consumer health and safety should be based on sound science and not discriminate against any country in trade, he said. All countries should respect the internationally agreed rule-based regulatory system "to ensure biotechnology is not overwhelmed and eventually suffocated by irrational fears," he said.

BIOTECHNOLOGY: FOLLOWING THE RULES
David Hegwood
Special Counsel to the Secretary
United States Department of Agriculture

Forty million people in Africa are at risk of starving to death. The United States has pledged over 500,000 tons of food aid to Africa since the beginning of the year, the largest contribution of any country in the world.

Yet some countries in southern Africa would rather see their people starve than distribute the corn we have provided.

Why? Fear.

Fear that the corn is not safe to eat? No. This corn has been approved for production and consumption in the United States. In fact, Americans have been consuming this corn for years with no ill effects. The heads of the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations have all said it is safe.

No, it is fear of Europe that is keeping our corn out of the mouths of hungry people in Africa. European consumers are not sure about biotechnology, so hungry people in Africa don't eat. It's that simple.

The government of Zimbabwe will not allow biotech corn to be distributed within the country because some poor, starving farmer might plant a few kernels and contaminate the country. Then Europe might refuse to import food products from Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, the famine continues. It will continue in 2003, and 2004, and on and on until the underlying causes are remedied. The problems are inadequate food production, HIV/AIDS, civil and political strife, and failed government policies.

Resolving these problems will not be simple. We need every tool we can find and biotechnology is one of the brightest hopes for improving food production in Africa.

It can be done.

In 1965, the Indian subcontinent was wracked by famine. Thanks to Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution, by 1968 Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat and India became self-sufficient only a few years later.

Biotechnology can help to bring about a similar revolution in Africa. It is one of the tools that can help to provide a much needed boost to agricultural productivity in the region.

Today, only one country in Africa - - South Africa - - has approved commercial cultivation of transgenic crops. Only a handful of others have active research programs.

Improving productivity will take time, even with biotechnology, but negative attitudes such as those in Europe are not merely an obstacle to progress toward future goals. They need to be overcome NOW so starving people can eat TODAY.

You might wonder why, at a conference on biotechnology in Latin America, I am talking about Africa. If European attitudes are influential enough to keep safe food away from hungry Africans simply because it was produced with biotechnology, imagine what impact these attitudes are having on the rest of the world, including the Americas.

Five years ago, when the public debate in Europe over labeling first started to heat up, many people thought the whole issue could be brought to a swift and relatively painless conclusion. The rationale was that once mandatory labeling was implemented, consumers would quickly lose interest in the labels and the issue, and the furor would die down.

Mandatory process-based labeling was and still is bad policy, but at the time there was hope it would be sufficient to overcome consumer concerns about the technology.

Then traceability was added to the agenda, followed shortly by the moratorium on new approvals.

Consumer attitudes worsened, or at least government perceptions of them did. The United States lost a $200 million dollar corn market and we have little hope of getting it back anytime soon.

Our problems in Europe were bad enough, but then the contagion started spreading. Other countries began to require labeling, including Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. More countries every year, including some in this hemisphere, are taking up the issue of mandatory labeling.

This year we faced the threat of losing a $1 billion [$1,000 million] dollar soybean market as China tried to implement new approval and labeling requirements.

The trade impacts of all of these regulations are both direct and indirect. Our exports to China and Europe have suffered because of the regulations in those countries.

But we have also seen exports to third countries affected. Customers have stopped buying our corn and soybeans because they do not want to have to label the food products they sell to Europe.

More recently, we have seen an even more troubling development. Food manufacturers in the United States are moving production facilities offshore and sourcing non-U.S. ingredients so they can avoid labeling.

The food companies have been very clear: they do not want to put GMO [genetically-modified organism] labels on their branded food products. They too, are afraid of the European attitudes toward biotechnology.

If it is happening to U.S. exports and U.S. companies, it will happen to every other country that utilizes biotechnology. And if they can do this to biotechnology, they can do it to any other issue that captures the attention of the European public.

In fact, the European Union [EU] has proposed in a paper submitted in Geneva for the current WTO [World Trade Organization] negotiations on agriculture, that countries should be able to pursue agriculture non-trade concerns through mandatory labeling requirements for food and agriculture products.

This path is leading us toward chaos.

Without question, public acceptance of biotechnology is the ultimate answer to many of the problems we now face. However, the lack of public acceptance is no excuse for governments to avoid their responsibilities.

In fact, the failure of governments to act responsibly is in large part responsible for the mess we now find ourselves in. Consumers in Europe lost confidence in the ability of the regulatory system to protect them because of government missteps in a series of crises, including Mad Cow Disease and the dioxin scare to cite just a couple.

Because of the global nature of the agri-food industry, those crises have had repercussions for consumers, businesses, and governments all around the world. As we see in southern Africa, sometimes those repercussions can be catastrophic.

How do we bring order to this chaos? Through rules.

For the past 60 years countries have been working together to establish workable, effective rules for trade in food and agricultural products. The rules framework consists of the WTO Agreements and the international scientific and standards setting organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius, the IPPC [Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control], and the OIE [Office International des Epizooties].

However, countries are not following the rules they have agreed to.

The EU moratorium on new approvals is a blatant violation of the WTO SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary] Agreement.

Mandatory labeling requirements are being applied in a discriminatory manner. For example, some countries require exporters from the United States to demonstrate the absence of biotech ingredients in exported food products, a requirement that is not applied to other countries.

The traceability and labeling requirements recently approved by the EU Council will not improve the situation. We believe the new rules are unworkable and will create incentives for fraud and abuse. At the same time, they give encouragement to other countries to proceed with mandatory process-based labeling requirements.

To bring more reason to government policies on biotechnology, we need more focus on the rules-based framework countries have already agreed to.

First, we need to maintain the distinction between health and safety issues and consumer information issues. Mandatory process-based labeling is not a health and safety issue, and it is a grave mistake for governments to allow consumers to believe that it is. Doing so undermines consumer confidence in the regulatory system.

Second, regulations intended to protect health and safety must be based on sound-science. Sound-science provides an objective standard for distinguishing between legitimate health and safety protections and disguised barriers to trade. Without an objective standard, the rules would be meaningless.

Third, countries must not be discriminated against. This is one of the two fundamental principles of the international trading regime.

These are basic and well-known rules. Unfortunately, when it comes to biotechnology they are routinely ignored. To make matters worse, some countries are working actively to subvert the existing rules.

Let's look first at labeling and consumer information. Labeling is usually couched as a consumer choice issue. Markets offer choices; governments dictate them.

Government-mandated, process-based labeling is an unwise, inefficient and unnecessary interference in the market. The United States, for better or worse, is the most consumer-oriented society in the world. Consumers in the United States have more choices than consumers anywhere else in the world. Consumers here can get anything they want from the marketplace, including non-biotech foods, if they are willing to pay for it.

In Europe, the government has substituted itself for the marketplace. It is imposing costs and regulatory burdens on the food system that it will not bear. Mandatory labeling will not work in the current food system. We are already seeing some of the dislocations it is causing. Consumers will suffer through higher prices. Farmers will suffer from the stifling of innovation. And hungry people in Africa will continue to suffer.

Not content to impose an unworkable system on its own economy, the EU is working to enshrine the right to mandatory process-based labeling in Codex. If successful, this would be the first time Codex has adopted mandatory labeling guidelines based solely on consumer choice instead of health and safety. The reputation of Codex as an international standards setting body would be severely, perhaps irreparably damaged.

With approvals the story is similar. Some countries in Europe refuse to approve biotech products even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of their safety. They cite the Precautionary Principle as their justification. Again, not content to impose the Precautionary Principle within the borders of Europe, the EU is working aggressively to insert the Precautionary Principle into the WTO, Codex, and anywhere else an opportunity arises. The Precautionary Principle has no role in science-based decision making; it substitutes politics for science, further undermining the credibility of the regulatory system.

The challenges of regulating biotechnology are difficult enough when the rules are followed. Rapid developments will make it hard for regulatory systems to keep up with the technology.

For example, detection of trace amounts of unapproved traits becomes increasingly likely as more field trials are conducted. The tendency for regulators will be to say that there should be no tolerance for unapproved traits, but scientifically, a no tolerance level may be neither justified nor practical.

These issues become more complex as the technology advances. The production of pharmaceuticals in plants creates a different set of challenges than the Bt and herbicide tolerant products that have been on the market for years. Pharmaceutical plants need to be regulated differently than the first generation of products. We should not let uncertainty about each new product that comes along prevent the operation of an effective regulatory system for everything else.

Respect for the rules-based system that we have all agreed to is the only way to ensure biotechnology is not overwhelmed and eventually suffocated by irrational fears.

The countries in this hemisphere have a particular interest in working together to preserve a rules system with sound science at its base. As our economies become more integrated, issues that impact one of us will increasingly impact all of us.

Already, the United States, Argentina and Canada have the three most biotechnology-reliant agricultural sectors in the world, and others in the hemisphere are quickly catching up.

We can not go backwards. We should not go backwards. We should work together to help the rest of the world catch up with us.

Thank you.