LABELING, TRADE AND GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOS): A PROPOSED SOLUTION

The purpose of this brief article is to assess the current controversy over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in agriculture and its potential implications for the global trading system. More importantly, it offers a solution to the serious potential for injury to this system, to be developed below. The remainder of this article is divided into three sections. The next section will discuss labeling of GMO agricultural products, distinguishing between issues of food products and those affecting seed. Next, it will argue in favor of a particular type of "negative" label ("this product contains no GMOs") as distinct from a "positive" label ("this product may contain GMOs"). This proposal draws on the U.S. experience in the dairy sector with milk from cows treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of issues which are left unresolved by the labeling proposal, and some of the remaining challenges posed by GMOs for the global food and agricultural system.International Relations/Trade, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

TOWARD A GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM

Since World War II barriers to international trade in industrial commodities have been reduced while barriers to agricultural commodity trade have become more severe. During the last several decades the world has experienced cycles of "food pessimism" and "food optimism." Nevertheless, as a result of technical change the terms at which the world's consumers can expect to have access to food appears to be more favorable in the future than in the past. If consumers are to have access to the greater abundance that can be made available, it will be necessary for developed market economies to reduce the distortions resulting from agricultural commodity and trade policies. It is in the interest of both producers and consumers, in developed and developing countries, that the world move toward an international trading regime in which agricultural commodities move across national borders at least as freely as financial resources.International Relations/Trade,

Innovative Verantwortungsgemeinschaften durch nachhaltigen und Ökologi-schen Landbau – Beispiele aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Kalifornien

The term Innovation is nowadays more frequently used together with so called High technologies like Genetic engineering (BBAW 2005) and only rarely for rather soft and social-environmentally sound practices like organic farming (NIGGLI 2002). Some regions in Europe and North America try hard to protect their innovative regional development concepts of which organic farming is an important part. They improve their networking activities on a local, regional and sometimes even global level. The following paper highlights such innovative example regions in California and the Ger-man state Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania

El avance de los transgénicos en México: ¿compromiso del gobierno con Monsanto?

Se demuestra cómo el actuar gubernamental solo beneficia a las grandes empresas trasnacionales, y cómo, el caso del maíz, se actúa contra toda la argumentación científica, de tal manera que el anteproyecto del acuerdo por el que se determinan los centros de origen y los centros de diversidad genética del maíz en el territorio nacional, representa un golpe fatal para este grano en México.ITESO, A.C