The American Farm Bureau is calling on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to "initiate a retaliation proceeding against the EU" because the bloc has "failed to comply with its WTO obligations to provide for a science-based, timely and predictable process for regulatory review of agriculture and food biotechnology products."
Included in a series of recommendations to the administration on how to increase U.S. exports, AFBF notes that in 2006, the WTO ruled that the EU was not in compliance with its trade obligations with respect to trade in genetically engineered crops. "This ruling granted the United States the right to retaliate on European goods. However, U.S. industries supported the decision of the U.S. government to suspend further action, for a limited period of time, to provide the EU an opportunity to demonstrate meaningful progress toward a functioning regulatory process that will help normalize trade in biotech products.
" U.S. agriculture has suffered substantial damage from the EU’s failure to abide by its WTO commitments and this damage will continue to grow as long as the EU does not comply with the WTO ruling. The inability of the EU to operate a timely and predictable regulatory process ended U.S. corn exports in 1998 and has reduced corn byproduct exports substantially. If the EU does not immediately begin to make timely, science-based regulatory decisions on pending and future applications, soybean exports also are at serious risk."
