Over the past year, European public confidence in GM products has dropped through the floor, while countries have grappled with seed-planting, trade law and the use of the precautionary principle. Keith Nuthall looks to the future of GMOs.

When is a carrot not a carrot? When is a lettuce not a lettuce? And indeed, when is a tomato not a tomato? These are not jokes, neither are they questions of high philosophy. But they are questions that could be vital for the effective running of the world's trading system in agricultural products in this new century. The answer runs to the heart of the global debate over genetically modified foods. For if in the future, international trade law says that a GM foodstuff is different in substance from a product that is identical, except for its genetic modification, then member countries of the World Trade Organisation will probably be able to block their importation if they have health worries.

But if a future WTO dispute panel ruled that GM foods are legally the same product, concerned importers would be in trouble. Under the WTO concept of like-product, importers cannot ban a product available for sale in their own country because of the way that it is made. Were GM foods to be considered the same as "natural" foods, with the process of genetic modification considered merely a manufacturing process, bans would be out of order. So far, there has been no such dispute at the WTO on GM foods, but the possibility of it occurring looms large over the world trading system. It would be - to bastardise Saddam Hussein - the mother of WTO dispute panels.

Such concerns were the subject of a recent conference on the GM industry at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, at Chatham House, London. Dr Gary Sampson, from the London School of Economics, called for a multilateral debate that would clear the air on the issue, notably ensuring that any global agreements on GM foodstuffs complemented WTO trade rules. He called for a special group of the WTO to look at its relationship with other international conventions, notably the recently agreed Protocol on Bio-Safety, which was finalised at a meeting in Montreal in February.

It has established a procedure for countries to follow, when deciding if they want GM imports in their shops.
Notably, it enshrined the precautionary principle in international law - a concept beloved of the European Commission - which allows nations to make rational and scientifically based decisions to block an import, where there are legitimate health concerns, but no solid conclusive proof of a problem. The key to this protocol is that importing countries should give consent to a consignment of GM products entering their territory and as a result, it proposes worldwide efforts to build the bureaucratic and scientific capacity of developing countries to make such informed decisions.

This protocol contains a clause that insists that its provisions should not override WTO rules, but there is a vagueness as regards its relationship with the law on like-products - a subject of debate at the conference.
Ironically, said Dr Christoph Bail, of the European Commission, the failure of the WTO summit at Seattle to launch an all-encompassing trade round - which could have led to a global agreement on the trade in GM products - "gave a push towards the finalisation of the protocol". Evidence of a post-Seattle shell-shock could perhaps be seen by the lack of opposition by the US to the proposals on the precautionary principle, which were agreed in three hours. This legal point has been at the heart of the dispute between Brussels and Washington over the import into the EU of hormone-treated beef, where the European Commission has been unable to conclusively prove that it harms human health.

In this case the United States has been attacking the precautionary principle, but at Montreal, there appeared to have been a change of heart. Maybe it was a sign of the penny dropping: there's only so much hard-ball that can be played with consensual international institutions such as the WTO, before they stop working altogether. This appararent softening of the American stance over the right of their GM industries to export products around the world, might also have been sparked by the realities of the market place. You can force an import past customs, but you cannot compel shops to buy it and least of all, consumers to eat it.

In the past year, European public confidence in its GM products - especially the GM foodstuffs grown by its farmers - has dropped through the floor, amid lurid national press stories about Frankenstein foods and tales of food poisoning. Gary Goldberg, chief executive officer of the American Corn Growers Association, said that European concern about GM had led to a drop in his members' corn exports to Europe, from 2 million tons in 1997-8, to 137,000 tonnes in 1998-9. For soyabeans, exports dropped from 11 million tonnes in 1997-8 to just over 6 million tonnes in 1998-9.
"The first rule of business is that the customer is always right," said Mr Goldberg. "They may not be right for the right reasons, but they are right nonetheless... These crops were pushed onto the market without first checking with the customer on what they wanted and if they would purchase it. It was a blunder by the industry to assume that the customer would remain silent and now the American farmer is facing the consequences of this short-sighted and arrogant business practice."
Another result of this collapse in confidence has been the undermining of efforts by retailers to establish a reliable and comprehensive labelling policy for consumers.

Freida Stack, of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, said that GM labelling for foodstuffs was only effective if there was a limited range of GM products, that there was no doubt whether a product was GM or not, that consumers could see a benefit in buying GM and when there was no general feeling against GM products.
These conditions, she said, only existed in 1994, when the co-op labelled its GM vegetarian cheddar cheese, whose label proclaimed that it was produced without animal rennet, because of genetic modification - hence highlighting a benefit to consumers. Today, she said, most of these positive conditions had disappeared. The acceptance of cargoes of American GM soya into the EU market and their resulting disappearence into the European food processing system has made it very difficult for retailers to check whether GM food is present, loading them with expensive testing costs.
Even with new technology, she said, it remains almost impossible for retailers to establish 100 per cent whether there are no GM ingredients in a product.

Also, for many GM foodstuffs, there is no apparent benefit in terms of quality or cost for consumers, she said. And, with the general negative mood against GM, retailers have fought shy of declaring that their foodstuffs have been genetically modified, fearing bad publicity. Now, under the new EU directive on labelling, it is illegal to sell a GM product without declaring its genetic modification and the result of this has been that fewer GM products are being sold.

Similar problems have yet to beset the medical arm of the genetical modification industry, although there may be knock-on effects for plans to deliver medicines to developing countries by means of GM fruits, engineered for example to contain additional vitamins or vaccines.

With Prince Charles and Greenpeace continuing an emotive debate against the technology, the issue is not going to go away. Whether or not consumers will be persuaded in the future that GM foods are more than just a reckless attempt by food manufacturers to make more money at the potential expense of the environment and the public's health, only time will tell.