World Trade Organisation comes to a preliminary ruling on ban on import modified foods and crops

9 February 2006

The newspaper mentions diplomats providing information from a classified document, with a size of almost 1000 pages, The document was drafted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) resulting from a 2003 complaint submitted by 3 large producers of commodity crops: the United States, Canada and Argentina. The document only has a preliminary status, the final ruling is expected in March 2006.

In the EU's perception, according to the newspaper, there never has been a ban, and the moratorium the EU was accused of, has been lifted in 2004 anyhow. Nevertheless, the newspaper qualifies the preliminary ruling as '...supporting companies active in global trade in genetically modified crops and food...'.

The article underpins the reason for commissioning the ERGO research programme: the expectation that new applications for genetically modified crops, harboring new (combinations of) genetic traits, are to be expected in the Netherlands and Europe.

source: NRC (a Dutch daily newspaper), February 8th 2006