GMO Trade Disputes And The Roles Of The WTO--The GMO Case Between The US And The EU

GMOs, the abbreviation for Genetically Modified Organisms, are organisms whose genetic makeup has been directly altered by humans. Through this change, the new organisms have a lot of new characteristics to benefit society. However, just because of its revolutionary nature, risk and uncertainty surround the process of genetic engineering and resulting GMO products.In view of GMOs, the United States (the US) has adopted them rapidly since they came into existence. On the contrary, the European Union (the EU) is more worried about the uncertainty and potential risks concerning GMOs. Their different opinions about GMOs have led to the conflicts between the two parties for several years and on May 13, 2003, these conflicts burst into a WTO (World Trade Organization) case-the US filed a WTO lawsuit against the EU over its over-four-year illegal moratorium on approving agricultural biotech products and its compulsory labeling requirements.Three considerations cause the US to appeal to WTO: (1) the enormous economic losses borne by the US as a result of the moratorium and the labeling; (2) The fear that other markets will, follow the EU, and forbid the use and distribution of the GMOs; (3) The risk that labeling will damage the consumer's confidence in GMOs. Apart from the above considerations, different regulatory system between the EU and the US is also a major cause for the conflicts.At present, under the WTO, three Agreements are related to the GMOs: the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the SPS Agreement (Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) and the TBT Agreement (Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade). However, opinions differ as to how toimplement the above agreements. Moreover, although the WTO has its own approach to deal with GMO disputes, the defects and weaknesses of the approach itself will increase the difficulty in judging the case. The final WTO decision can only be made in the years to come.With the rapid development of biotechnology, more GMO disputes will certainly arise. Now, the most important thing is not to know what the judgment about the case will be, but to consider how to avoid such disputes. It is the obligations of the WTO to solve these conflicts and disputes through setting up the new rules for the GMOs and to reorder the world GMO trade.