Europe's Regulation of Agricultural Biotechnology: Precaution or Trade Distortion?

Ian Sheldon

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, 2004, vol. 2, issue 2, 28

Abstract: In July 2003, the European Parliament voted on amendments to the European Union's (EU) system of regulation for agricultural biotechnology, most notably the rules for mandatory labeling of food products that contain traces of genetically modified (GM) ingredients. The expectation is that approval of these changes in EU regulations will result in the moratorium on approval of new GM crops, formalized by the Council of the European Union in 1999, being lifted. Despite the approval of these amendments, in August, the US, along with Canada and Argentina, requested the formation of a WTO dispute panel to make a ruling on the EU's failure to approve marketing of a number of GM crops.This paper addresses the issue of whether there is any legitimacy in the EU's precautionary approach to biotechnology regulation, or whether their regulatory approach is trade distorting, and, hence, likely to be found in violation of WTO agreements. First, the background to the debate in the EU and US over biotechnology is reviewed, paying particular attention to recent public discussion in the UK where the government has undertaken an extensive public consultation process over regulation of GM crops. Second, the EU's approach to biotechnology regulation is outlined and compared to that in the US, and the analytical foundations of the precautionary principle are reviewed. Third, how GM regulations fit into the rules of the WTO is outlined, along with a discussion of the nature of the US's WTO filing.

Keywords: biotechnology; protection; regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1542-0485.1060 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bjafio:v:2:y:2004:i:2:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jafio/html

DOI: 10.2202/1542-0485.1060

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization is currently edited by Azzeddine Azzam

More articles in Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().