REAL food?...Going, going, .......

From International Herald Tribune:

WTO gives EU more time on genetically modified foods
By James Kanter
Published: November 22, 2007

PARIS: Adding to the uncertainty over European policies toward genetically modified foods, the World Trade Organization said Thursday that the European Union would be given more time to end blockages on imports of engineered foods like corn.

"The period during which the EU was meant to have worked this out expired, and the parties decided to extend the deadline to Jan. 11," said Keith Rockwell, a spokesman for the WTO.

The EU had been due to end the blockages by Nov. 21.

The agreement came after EU officials held a series of talks with their counterparts in the United States, Argentina and Canada over the past weeks, said Peter Power, a spokesman for the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson.

Argentina, Canada and the United States have sued the European Union at the WTO, which ruled last year that a de facto EU ban on imports of genetically modified foods between 1984 and 2004 was illegal.

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One of the biggest stumbling blocks for resolving the case is an ongoing refusal by Austria to allow imports of two genetically modified corn types produced by Bayer of Germany and Monsanto of the United States.

Some officials within the European Commission, the EU's executive body, want to mandate an end to the Austrian ban. But other officials have expressed concerns about genetically modified foodstuffs, pointing to potential dangers of engineered crops as well as to public opinion, which in many countries is skeptical of them.

So far, the EU has been unable to agree on whether to order Austria to lift its ban, and there is little sign of an end to the acrimony between Europeans and Americans over the products.

"For too long, GM foods have been a thorn in the side of trans-Atlantic relations," said Jacqueline Mailly, a senior regulatory affairs advisor with the law firm Hogan & Hartson in Brussels.

Now, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas could be triggering another fight with the United States over genetically modified foods by proposing a European ban on the cultivation of modified corn made by Pioneer Hi-Bred, Dow Agrosciences and Syngenta, on the grounds that the products could harm the environment.

U.S. officials said this week that Dimas's move was unprecedented because it brushed aside findings by EU scientists from 2005 that the corn posed no evident dangers. But Dimas said new evidence had come to light requiring further investigation.

Simon Tilford, of the Center for European Reform, a research institute in London, said the approach taken by Dimas could only worsen trade relations with the United States.

But Barbara Helfferich, a spokeswoman for Dimas, said EU officials could take decisions under the "precautionary principle," even when scientists had found no definitive evidence that products can cause harm.

Helfferich also said the EU had been allowing imports of genetically modified products since July 2004, when it approved imports of modified corn by Monsanto to be used in animal feed.

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