FROM PADDOCK TO PLATE, INTERNATIONAL GMO LABELLING STANDARDS REMAIN BLOCKED BY TRADE CONCERNS

摘要

The potential trade impacts of environmental regulation have been a cause of concern among trade negotiators for several decades. Regulations whose effect on trade flows exceeds that necessary to achieve environmental objectives may be regarded as non-tariff barriers, and challenged under World Trade Organisation or regional trade rales. The dispute currently before the WTO dispute settlement panel over Europe's treatment of biotech products, previously reported in this journal, is a good case in point. In recent years, these tensions have increasingly been played out before the regulations are concluded. Trade concerns and WTO-compatibility intrude on the negotiation of national environmental and health laws and international agreements more overtly, if not actually more frequently, than ever before. The European Union's draft legislation requiring the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (REACH) is an excellent example, having been revised following close scrutiny at several meetings of the WTO's Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade. Likewise, the inconsistent preambular provisions of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, under the Convention on Biological Diversity, are a striking multilateral example of the complexities that arise "when two worlds collide".