Bid to Break Deadlock Over GM Food

A new international initiative to break the policy deadlock over the future role of genetically modified food is to be launched on Thursday by the World Bank.

A global consultation process over the possible benefits and drawbacks of biotechnology involving governments, industry and environmentalists is to begin next month. It will be chaired by Robert Watson (pictured), former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Mr Watson, now chief scientist at the World Bank, was removed as chairman of the IPCC this year following pressure from the US administration and Exxon, the oil group, apparently concerned at his success at moving global warming up the political agenda.

Describing the agriculture initiative, he said: "This issue is as controversial as climate change. Our intention is to ask the big questions about the future of agriculture."

The exercise will be transparent and consider the future of biotechnology along with traditional farming techniques and organic agriculture, said Mr Watson.

"The situation in Paris may be very different to that in Mali. Just as we need a variety of different energy sources, so we will need a mix of farming types.

"In the future, there will be a mix of organic, traditional and farming using different types of biotechnology. We want to assess the scientific, economic, environmental and social aspects of all techniques," Mr Watson told the Financial Times.

The initiative comes against a background of profound differences over the use of biotechnology in world farming. Opposition by European consumers to the technology continues to pose trade problems with the US, where biotechnology is largely accepted by the public and policymakers.

The US administration on Wednesday raised the stakes on its confrontation with the European Union over an EU moratorium on genetically modified food, blaming it for the refusal of some southern African governments to accept genetically modified food for their starving populations.

Alan Larson, US undersecretary of state, told reporters in Washington that the moratorium "has raised in the minds of some governments unwarranted doubts about whether they should accept free food aid that is food that everyone that lives in the United States eats every day."

The US is already threatening legal action over the moratorium on approving new GM crops.

"This more than a trade dispute," Mr Larson said. "It is something that has begun to run the risk of having extraordinarily damaging consequences for some of the most vulnerable people on the face of the Earth."

Developing countries remain divided over the benefits and possible dangers of adopting the technology. Zambia has refused genetically modified US food aid for fear its own crops could be contaminated and exports damaged.

The World Bank initiative aims to have as much impact on policy formation as the IPCC - widely credited with forcing governments to take action to combat global warming by agreeing in 1992 to introduce the Kyoto protocol.

The initiative, expected to last between two and three years, would not lead to a moratorium on the commercialisation of genetically modified crops, Mr Watson said. Individual governments would continue to make their decisions while the assessments took place. "I do not see this leading to a freeze on the technology," he said.

Mr Watson said the initiative would look at the whole range of issues facing farming in the future - from the need to feed the growing world population to the strengthening of rural economies. It would also consider the intellectual property rights regime, which critics of biotechnology say could lead to unacceptable monopoly control by large companies.

He agreed the farming initiative was potentially as politically sensitive as his previous work on climate change.

He warned it would be wrong for industry and the US adminstration to let commercial pressures override its the World Bank's findings.