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“There is enormous international pressure to allow GM crops and seeds in this country from the biotech companies. They are going through national governments and the World Trade Organization and pressurizing the EU.”
UK Countryside Minister Elliot Morley, The Guardian, 20 August 2002.

EU consumers and farmers are adamant that they want GMO-free food, but powerful agribusiness interests including Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau Federation have been pressuring the US government to use the World Trade Organization (WTO) to force Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) onto a hostile EU consumer market.

Since 1998, the EU has upheld a de facto moratorium on the approval of GMO crops and foods. This moratorium was established to allow the EU to develop comprehensive legislation on GMO testing, marketing, labeling and traceability in the food chain. Such legislation, based on the ‘precautionary principle’, was an important response to public fears about the loss of consumer choice and the possible health and environmental risks of this new technology (see examples on contaminated corn and the starlink scanda l). But US agribusiness will not give up the EU market without a fight, and is using the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to try to force the EU to open its markets to GMOs.

monsanto rules the fields
Monsanto is the largest GMO producer on the planet: 90 percent of the 140 million acres under biotech cultivation worldwide were sowed with the company’s corn and soy. For Monsanto and other biotech firms, profits rely heavily on consumer acceptance. Companies claim that they have foregone an estimated US$300 million in exports to Europe thanks to the EU’s moratorium.
This battle is not only about Europe: consumers and farmers across the globe are calling for local control over food and agriculture. The recent example of countries in southern Africa and elsewhere rejecting US food aid contaminated by GMOs illustrates the growing rejection of US attempts to force GMOs onto an unwilling global public.

getting cosy with decision-makers
Given the profits at stake, its not surprising to find that Monsanto and the US agribusiness lobby have made a concerted effort to ensure that the US government protects corporate interests.

In the US, Monsanto’s close ties with the government are the result of money well spent: in 2000, the company dished out US$2,002,000 on lobbying and donated lavishly to well-placed politicians. This generosity appears to have paid off with direct access for Monsanto to US government officials and negotiators, as well as representation on the government’s Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee for Trade and the US Drug Administration’s Biotech Advisory Panel.

Monsanto is active in all of the major US agribusiness and biotech lobbies, including BIO, the US Grains Council, and the Food Industry Codex Coalition. All of these lobby groups are opposed to the EU’s protective stance on GMOs: BIO complains that the moratorium “threatens the viability of the global trading system”, and the US Grains Council and the National Corn Growers Association urged the US government to launch a WTO dispute against the EU due to its “hysterical” position on GMOs. Monsanto is also a member of Europabio, the main European biotechnology lobby group, which also argues that the moratorium is “indefensible”.

Monsanto has a close and powerful ally in the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful organizations in Washington. Despite its cultivated appearance as a ‘grassroots farmers’ organization’, the AFBF has extensive corporate connections and its policy positions reflect the concerns of corporate agribusiness. The AFBF has repeatedly lobbied the US Administration to take action in the WTO against the EU’s GMO policies.

Monsanto’s high-level influence with the US government is strengthened by a ‘revolving door’ through which staff drift between industry and government. For example, Michael (Mickey) Kantor, a former Secretary of the US Department of Commerce and former US Trade Representative, is now a member of Monsanto’s Board of Directors. Michael Taylor, who previously worked as an attorney for Monsanto, was Deputy Commissioner for the US Food and Drug Administration when it controversially approved Monsanto’s BST milk-enhancing hormone, and later returned to Monsanto as a Vice President. These connections are not limited to the US Administration: Monsanto’s former Chief Counsel, Rufus Yerxa, was appointed deputy to the WTO Director General in August 2002. The Financial Times described Yerxa as “…just the man [the WTO Director General] will need should the US ever bleat to the WTO about EU restrictions on genetically modified food.”

These familial connections between Monsanto, the US government and the WTO doubtlessly facilitated the launching of the current dispute with the EU over GMOs. The public launch of the trade war was covered with Monsanto’s fingerprints: several speakers at the press conference were linked to Monsanto, including the so-called “small farmer” from South Africa, who in fact regularly speaks on behalf of Monsanto at various pro-biotech platforms. Tactics like this are a slap in the face to real small farmers, as well as consumers around the world, who will be the true losers if corporate interests are allowed to prevail in this food fight.