Just a few years ago, World
Trade Organisation officials used to act hurt when described by social activists
as irresponsible, secretive bureaucrats who trampled over national sovereignty
and placed free trade over the environment or human rights. But that was when
the global-trade policeman ruled on disputes that had little bearing on
Europeans.
The WTO court's latest ruling will greatly
increase the number of people who believe the organisation needs radical reform,
if not burial. This week three judges emerged after years of
secret deliberation
to rule that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM food imports between 1999
and 2003, violating WTO rules. The court also ruled that Austria, France,
Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg had no legal grounds to impose their own
unilateral import bans. "Europe guilty!" shouted the US press. "This is glorious
news for the Bush administration," said one blogger.
Actually, the judges said much more, but in true WTO
style no one has been allowed to know what. A few bureaucrats in the US, EU,
Argentina and Canada have reportedly seen the full 1,045-page report, and an
edited summary of some of its conclusions has been leaked.
But no one, it seems,
will take responsibility for the ruling, which may force the EU to pay hundreds
of millions of dollars to compensate some of the world's most heavily subsidised
farmers, and could change the laws of at least six countries that have imposed
GM bans.
In fact the US has mostly won a lot of new enemies. Rather
than going away, as the biotech companies and Washington fervently hoped, the
opposition to GM foods seems to have been growing since 2004 when the case was
brought to the WTO. Europe, its member states and its consumers all rejected the
ruling last week, making the WTO look even more out of touch and incompetent to
rule on issues about the environment,
health and consumer
choice.
The European commission, which has been trying to
force GM
crops into Europe over the heads of its member states, says the ruling is
"irrelevant" because its laws have already been changed. Meanwhile, individual
countries who dislike being told what to eat or grow by the EC as much as the WTO say they will resist any attempts to make them accept GM.
In
the past few days Hungary has declared that it is in its economic interests to
remain GM-free, and Greece and Austria have affirmed their total opposition to
the crops. Italy has called the WTO ruling "unbalanced" and Poland's prime
minister has pledged to keep the country GM-free. Local government is even more
opposed: more than 3,500 elected councils in 170 regions of Europe have declared
themselves GM-free.
There is little the WTO, the EC or the US can
do in face of this coalition of the unwilling. If the US again tries to
impose
its GM products on Europe - as it did in the 90s, sparking the whole debacle -
the attempt will backfire. Europe's biotech industry may now try to force the EC
to use the WTO judgment to get the six countries with import bans to repeal
anti-GM laws, but it will meet an even broader, more determined
movement.
In fact, Washington and the US companies are not that
bothered by Europe's predictable reaction. Europe has all but dropped off the
world's GM map. The companies and the supermarkets know there is little or no
demand for GM crops, and that Europe's subsidised farmers are reluctant to
alienate the public further by growing them.
It is now clear that
the real reason the US took Europe to the WTO court was was to make it easier
for its companies to prise open regulatory doors in China, India, south-east
Asia, Latin America and Africa, where most US exports now go. This is where
millions of tonnes of US food aid heads, and where US GM companies are desperate
to have access, buying up seed companies and schmoozing presidents and prime
ministers.
More than two-thirds of exported US corn now goes to
Asia and Africa, where once it went to Europe. As the Monsanto man said this
week about the WTO ruling: "Our feeling is that it's important for countries
other than the EU to have science-based regulatory
frameworks."
Like the tobacco industry, GM companies are now
focusing almost exclusively on developing countries. But here the industry is
meeting stiff opposition from powerful unions and farming groups. Brazil has
caved in, but Bolivia may shortly become the first Latin American country to
fully reject GM. Some Indian states are deeply opposed, and there have been
major demonstrations in the Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and elsewhere. India's
largest farmers' organisation this week said the result of the WTO verdict would
be that the US would become more aggressive in dumping GM food on to developing
countries.
The US maintains that through the WTO it
has won a great
victory for free trade, and passed a significant milestone in US attempts "to
have GM crops accepted throughout the world". Perhaps, but the battle is far
from won, and in the meantime anyone opposing the crops
is being reclassed as an
enemy of America.
Within hours of the WTO decision, José Bové, the
French farmer who has led European protests, arrived in New York to give an
invited talk to Cornell students about GM food - and was immediately
sent back
to France by the US government.
