8:03 AM Oct 12, 1995

UNITED STATES: SHIFTING BIOSAFETY DEBATE TO WTO?

Geneva Oct 11 (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The prospect of increased pressures and moves at the second meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Biiosafety Convention at Jakarta to push for a biosafety protocol, the United States appears to be weighing the possibility of shifting this debate to the World Trade Organization, positing a conflict between WTO trade rules and any biosafety protocol.

The Jakarta meeting is set for the second week of November.

In September, scientists working at the US government's Environment Protection Agency (EPA) issued a statement criticising their department's decision to allow the release of the genetically modified (engineered) Rhizobium meliloti RMBPC-2, without a proper weighing of the risks, but merely proceeding on the basis of commercial benefits.

According to an article by Beth Burrows, Director of the Edmonds Institute in Washington, in the magazine Terrain, the EPA scientists released their report, "Genetic Genie", through PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility), to put pressure on the EPA.

The report warned about the serious potential dangers in such decisions taken without proper weighing of the scientific evidence of risks and benefits.

The United States administration has been using every tactic, and at every stage so far, to block work on a biosafety protocol, called for by the Nairobi meeting that concluded the draft protocol which was signed at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. But prospect of a possible shift in US tactics emerges after an unofficial meeting, held at the Cosmos club in Washington DC, last week of various US agencies and departments involved with some leading non-government organizations, where the US officials sought inputs from the NGOs on the range of questions involved in rules for regulating the release, transport, and commercial use of genetically manipulated organisms (GMOs).

According to information from US NGOs who have been following this issue, the meeting was attended by five US agencies -- the department of Agriculture, State Department, Environment Protection Agency, the Food and Drugs Administration and the office of the US Trade Representative.

At the meeting, the US government representatives were reported as asking the NGOs for their input regarding the modalities they would like to see in an international biosafety protocol.

Some NGOs noted that this was the first time that the U.S. appeared willing to accept that such a protocol will emerge from negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Prior to this, the NGOs said, the US administration had steadfastly insisted that such a protocol is not needed.

Participants said that of the five agencies' representatives, only Val Giddings of the United States Department of Agriculture still appeared unwilling to concede to the demands of the NGOs present (and most governments throughout the world) that negotiations proceed with substantive text at the next meeting of the COP that takes place in November in Jakarta, Indonesia.

In contrast, representatives of the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of the USTR engaged the NGOs in discussions regarding scope, enforcement, and the relationship between this protocol and other multilateral environmental agreements, particularly the proposal for a mandatory convention on the use of Prior Informed Consent when toxic materials are transported across national borders.

Some of the NGOs present at the Cosmos Club interpret this to mean that, while recognizing the inevitability of the biosafety protocol, the U.S. plans to shift the debate to one of trade rules.

Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute assesses the USTR stance as, "they've taken off the velvet gloves. The U.S.'s interest in the Biodiversity Convention is really about gaining access to germplasm."

According to Kristin Dawkins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, this was the first time that the US Trade Representative sent staff to discussions regarding potential rules for regulating the release, transport, and commercial use of genetically manipulated organisms.

She expects the US "will now argue that biosafety rules to ensure human health and ecological safety are a trade barrier and conflict with the GATT/WTO."

Stressing the great potential for a biosafety/WTO conflict, Dawkins said that at the June meeting of the WTO's Committee on Trade and Environment, a series of issues have been enumerated as needing clarification to reconcile provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the WTO agreements on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS).