International Trade And Policies For Genetically Modified Products

There are a number of controversial issues that surround agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified products. International trade and policies are at the forefront of these controversies. This book addresses these issues and has been developed from a meeting of the International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research, held in Revello, Italy, in July 2004. It covers five themes: analytical studies; empirical trade studies; spillover dimensions; intellectual property rights; and applied general equilibrium trade models.

This publication, one of a series of UNCTAD studies which discuss key international trade and development policy issues, focuses on the trade implications of the application of biotechnology techniques in agriculture and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and products derived from them. Topics considered include: domestic legislation on agro-biotechnology in selected developed and developing countries; the multilateral legal framework, including the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety; actual and potential GM-related trade disputes.

The controversial issue of genetically modified (GM) food is discussed in this book. While the United States (US) is a strong supporter of GM technology having adopted a rather lax regulation of trade with GM products, the European Union (EU) is representing a sceptical position towards this new technology and has even imposed a de facto moratorium on further approval of GM products from 1998 to 2004. The purpose of this book is an extensive analysis of the current status on risks and benefits of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and a suggestion on how an appropriate regulation of GM products could be derived. Potential guidelines are provided for policy formulation both in a qualitative and in a quantitative dimension. The US is applying the principle of substantial equivalence, which means that GM products are in their substance identical to products produced by conventional methods. Therefore, no new regulations are necessary for the trade with GM products. In contrast, the European Union (EU) disagrees that GM products are equivalent to their conventional counterparts due to the different production process. Instead, the EU refers to the precautionary principle in its GMO policy, meaning that trade with GM products should be restricted until it will be proven that no additional risks are implied by the use of these products. The divergence of opinions about the right policy to regulate GM products has significant impacts on trade flows and welfare effects. The US and the EU have already tried to resolve their dispute before the World Trade Organization (WTO). Relevant laws of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the WTO are presented as well as indications for a potential consensus.

Genetically modified food is at the heart of a new global conflict over how to govern risky technologies in an era of globalization. This timely collection brings together experts from the fields of IR, environmental studies, trade and law to examine the sources of international friction and to explore the prospects for international co-operation.

This book discusses the regulatory and trade challenges facing the global adoption of biotechnological products and offers strategies for overcoming these obstacles and moving towards greater global food security. The first section of the book establishes the context of the conflict, discussing the challenges of global governance, international trade, and the history of regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops. In this section, the authors emphasize the shift from exclusively science-based regulation to the more socio-economically focused framework established by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which was adopted in 2000. The second section of the book provides a snapshot of the current state of international GM crop adoption and regulation, highlighting the US, Canada, and the EU. The final section of the book identifies options for breaking the gridlock of regulation and trade that presently exist. This book adds to the current literature by providing new information about innovative agricultural technologies and encouraging debate by providing an alternative to the narratives espoused by environmental non-governmental organizations. This book will appeal to students of economics, political science, and policy analysis, as well as members of regulatory agencies and agricultural industry firms.

"Anderson, Damania, and Jackson develop a common-agency lobbying model to help understand why North America and the European Union have adopted such different policies toward genetically modified (GM) food. Their results show that when firms (in this case farmers) lobby policymakers to influence standards, and consumers and environmentalists care about the choice of standard, it is possible that increased competition from abroad can lead to strategic incentives to raise standards, not just lower them as shown in earlier models. The authors show that differences in comparative advantage in the adoption of GM crops may be sufficient to explain the trans-Atlantic difference in GM policies. On the one hand, farmers in a country with a comparative advantage in GM technology can gain a strategic cost advantage by lobbying for lax controls on GM production and use at home and abroad. On the other hand, when faced with greater competition, the optimal response of farmers in countries with a comparative disadvantage in GM adoption may be to lobby for more-stringent GM standards. So it is rational for producers in the European Union (whose relatively small farms would enjoy less gains from the new biotechnology than broad-acre American farms) to reject GM technology if that enables them and consumer and environmental lobbyists to argue for restraints on imports from GM-adopting countries. This theoretical proposition is supported by numerical results from a global general equilibrium model of GM adoption in America with and without an EU moratorium. This paper a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Groupis part of a larger effort in the group to understand the economic implications of standards and technology policies in a multilateral trading environment"--World Bank web site.