US wins WTO backing in war with Europe over GM food

The World Trade Organisation last night ruled that Europe had broken international trade rules by blocking the import of genetically modified food, in a decision US trade officials hailed as a victory.

The WTO found that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM food imports for six years from 1998 which violated trade agreements, and that Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg also had no legal grounds to impose their own unilateral import bans.

The decision is subject to appeal and European officials insisted it applied to the past rather than current EU import policies, but the US maintained the ruling lent support to the Bush administration's efforts to force an acceleration in EU approval procedures for GM food imports.

Details of the complex ruling, more than 800 pages long, were not available last night as trade experts on both sides of the Atlantic began to digest the report's implications. But US officials said the WTO decision had broadly vindicated the American position, which had been supported by Canada and Argentina.

A US trade official described the outcome as "a significant milestone" in US efforts to have GM crops accepted in international trade. "The panel did find that there was a general [EU] moratorium and that it did violate WTO rules."

But there was disappointment in Brussels. "This needs to be examined very carefully, but some of it will make for difficult reading," one official said. The European trade commission, headed by Peter Mandelson, will respond today.

However, European officials pointed out last night that the moratorium had been lifted in 2004, and that since then the European commission had licensed more than 30 GM crops, including three last month after "rigorous safety assessment".

US officials countered that there remained backlogs of up to a decade in the approval of imports of about 20 types of GM corn, cotton and soyabean. The Bush administration had argued that the EU moratorium had had a chilling effect on the development of GM crops around the world, to the detriment of global food production. "We wanted biotech products to be judged on their merits, not by a political process," another US trade official said.

European environment and consumer groups last night called the ruling a direct attack on European democracy and appealed to governments to stand up to what they called US "bullying tactics". "US agrichemical giants will not sell a bushel more of their GM grain as a result of the WTO ruling," said Daniel Mittler, Greenpeace International's trade adviser.

"It's a desperate attempt to force these products on an unwilling market. This will lead to even greater opposition to GM crops," said Claire Oxborrow of Friends of the Earth International. "Protecting wildlife, farmers and consumers is far more important than free trade rules."

A coalition of 170 regions in Europe and 4,500 smaller areas have said they want to be GM-free."I do not expect this decision to change European law, but it will be used by the US government to pressure countries around the world to further liberalise trade rules," said Sue Meyer, of the watchdog group Genewatch.