Extracts: The US is trying to undermine the Biosafety Protocol and prevent the labeling of GMOs

They have refused to ratify it, partly in deference to their farming lobbies.

But they have the right to attend as observers, and the signs are that they will actively and vocally defend their interests.

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World discusses GM crops, bio-diversity
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US-European row on GM crops set to trouble United Nations biodiversity talks
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A three-week gathering on the United Nations' biodiversity accord is to get underway here on Monday to likely friction between the United States and Europe over genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The world's two trade giants are already locking horns over GM crops in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the row is likely to spill into the arena in Kuala Lumpur, sources say.

The conference in the Malaysian capital will review application of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, an offshoot of the 1992 Rio summit that promotes conservation and sustainable use of species, bacteria and genes.

The treaty has been ratified by more than 175 countries but has some notable holdouts, including the United States, and campaigners say this is a serious flaw in the efforts to slow the planet's dramatic loss of natural resources.

The conference, which runs until February 27, will be conducted by senior officials who will be replaced by environment ministers on February 18 and 19.

The chief bone of contention is expected to be GM foods, of burning interest to Argentina, Canada and the United States, three major food exporters and growers of transgenic crops.

Those countries helped draw up the Biosafety Protocol, a legally binding offshoot of the Convention which deals with transboundary movements of GMOs.

They have refused to ratify it, partly in deference to their farming lobbies.

But they have the right to attend as observers, and the signs are that they will actively and vocally defend their interests.

The United States is sending its assistant secretary of state for the environment, Claudia McMurray, backed by a team of about 30 officials: a powerful show of media power that it also deployed at the Kyoto Protocol talks in Milan in December.  

"The US is trying to undermine the Biosafety Protocol and prevent the labelling of GMOs," said Eric Gall, GMO policy advisor for Greenpeace Europe.

"Our goal coming out of the meeting would be that we find a balance between the very legimate protections for the environment that are contained ëin the accord)... with an ability to continue trade unencumbered," Harvey Lee of the Office of Ecology in the State Department, told AFP.

The US and its allies are furious at EU plans, backed by what sources say is a majority of developing countries, to impose tough requirements on exporters of GM crops.

The EU has a de-facto embargo on importing and planting bio-engineered food, a ban that is being contested by the United States at the WTO.  However, the EU nations, in a preparatory move towards an expected easing of these restrictions, have passed tough laws on identifying and labelling food that has GM ingredients.

The EU now wants the meeting to follow its line for exports of GM commodities -- wheat, corn and soya are the main ones today -- and this is being attacked by Washington, which says GM crops are safe.

The US approach wants minimal labelling requirements.

Two other GM issues will also be thorny.

One concerns liability and redress for GM crop contamination (who is to blame and who will pay if, for instance, GM crops cross-pollinate with normal crops in an adjacent field), while the other entails the setting up of a committee to monitor compliance with the Biosafety Protocol.

Billions of dollars are at stake in these issues. A farmer or exporter who has to carefully separate grains to ensure there is just a minute GM component, or who has to fill out complex documents to detail the assignment, could lose substantial money.

This explains why not only exporting countries but also commodity traders and biotech laboratories are sending big lobbying teams to the conference.  

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