ISDS Case Map
GMOs
BIO congratulates US Chief Agricultural Negotiator Richard Crowder and his staff for negotiating a separate understanding on several agricultural biotechnology issues. The FTA will go a long way in providing additional market access opportunities in Korea for US biotechnology companies.
Dr. Michael K Hansen, from US Centre of Consumer Policy, advises a cautious attitude towards an FTA with the US as the US has a hidden agenda in seeking to protect its farmers who now face more than RM4.6 billion in losses due to the lack of demand for GE rice.
The South Korean government pledged to ease quarantine rules on products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under a free trade agreement with the United States struck on April 2. But while negotiations were underway on the deal, the government denied it was discussing the topic.
South Korea has reportedly exempted US foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from safety tests in the Korea-US free trade agreement struck on April 2, a move that Korean environmentalists criticised as the government "selling off" the health of the nation.
Consumers Association of Penang is extremely concerned and anxious that Malaysia's Biosafety Bill and an amendment to the Food Regulations are now threatened by proposals made in the negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States.
The Malaysian government has been urged not to bend to US pressure, under their bilateral FTA talks, to scrap its proposed laws that would bring in mandatory labeling of genetically-modified (GM) foods.
With maize trade scheduled to be fully liberalized under NAFTA in 2008, many farm groups are
calling for a renegotiation of the treaty's agricultural provisions to prevent further
damage. This analysis examines the room for alternative policies in Mexico under
existing economic and environmental agreements, including NAFTA. It concludes that
the Mexican government retains access to many useful policy instruments that could
promote rural livelihoods while arresting the losses of important maize diversity. What is
lacking is the political will to make use of them.
Paper presented to the European Commission in Brussels by Liepollo Lebohang Pheko from IGTN-Africa on the gender impacts of liberalization of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA).
Mexico has moved to ban experimental fields of genetically modified (GM) maize. But the gateway into Mexico of transgenic maize, in the form of unlabeled grain imports, remains ajar. In 2008, as part of NAFTA, the quotas and other barriers for the entry of US-grown GM maize and beans into Mexico will be eliminated.
This new briefing from GRAIN and the African Centre for Biosafety looks at how governments, the agribusiness sector and transnational companies are increasingly using bilateral trade agreements to prise open markets for genetically modified crops.
