Saint Louis, Missouri
July 9, 2008
The American Soybean
Association (ASA) this week urged the European Commission to
find a workable and commercially viable solution to the EU’s
zero tolerance for the low level presence of EU-unapproved
biotech events. European livestock and feed industries, along
with U.S. growers, all have been advocating for a workable
solution due to the EU’s slow and politically-influenced biotech
approval process that results in European biotech reviews and
approvals taking over twice as long as science-based reviews and
approvals in the rest of the world, including the United States.
The ASA and European feed and livestock industries believe a
partial practical solution to this problem is for the EU to
permit the low level presence of a biotech trait that has
undergone regulatory review and received safety clearances in
the country of export. The other part of the solution is for the
EU to greatly improve the timeliness of its approval system and
ensure that its approval process is wholly science-based. The EU
is the fourth largest export market for U.S. soybeans,
representing sales of more than $1 billion in 2007. To avoid
disruption of trade and resulting negative impacts on EU
livestock production, ASA is advocating practical and sensible
tolerance level solutions be found to ensure that there are no
unwarranted barriers to trade.
Since 1994, ASA has carried out numerous missions to the EU on
biotechnology issues. In the course of the past six months, ASA
has held many meetings in the EU on the asynchronous approvals
and zero tolerance issues. In almost all of these meetings, ASA
has been asked about zero tolerances (and in particular very
low-level tolerances such as 0.1 percent) by concerned EU
industries from the feed and farming sectors.
In a letter to Paola Testori Coggi, Deputy Director General, DG
SANCO, European Commission, ASA President John Hoffman, a
soybean producer from Waterloo, Iowa, said, "We have made it
very clear that ASA views low level tolerances of 0.1 percent as
wholly impractical for commodity soybean crop production and
imports. Given the complex nature of commodity production and
exportation involving millions of metric tons of soybeans grown
by hundreds of thousands of growers on millions of
acres/hectares, a tolerance of 5 percent should be a minimum
starting point."
Hoffman also pointed out that the OECD (Organization for
Economic Co-Operation and Development) standards for certified
planting seed are set a 99 percent purity level. These rigorous
OECD standards have been developed with the strong participation
of EU Member State governments and industry to apply to planting
seeds, not general commodity production. As such, the required
purity standards for commodity imports should be lower (i.e.,
less than 99 percent purity) than that which the OECD, European
governments, and industry have determined should apply to
planting seeds.
"U.S. soybean growers have exported soybeans to Europe for more
than 50 years and want to continue to do so," Hoffman said.
However, both we and our European customers in the feed and farm
sectors recognize the urgent need for a sensible solution to the
wholly impractical zero tolerance law. This is especially
crucial given the increasing number of biotech soybean events
that have either gained authorization from functioning
regulatory systems in many other countries or are very close to
commercialization."
ASA is the policy advocate and collective voice of its 22,000
producer-members on domestic and international issues of
importance to all U.S. soybean farmers. |
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