July 16, 2009

The commercialisation of GM crops is a regulated activity and different countries have different authorisation procedures, and this "asynchronous approval" (AA) is of growing concern for its potential impact on international trade.

This may cause problems for imports that contain only traces of such GMOs, as they may be rejected by countries that operate on a zero-tolerance policy.

A similar problem arises when developers of new GM crop do not seek approval in the export market for "low-level presence" (LLP) of unapproved material when there is "isolated foreign approval" (IFA) in their home countries. 

LLP incidents have caused trade disruption and economic problems, particularly for the EU feed and livestock sector. 

To forecast the future evolution of LLP, a global pipeline of new GM crops was established. There are currently about 30 commercial GM events cultivated worldwide, but it could grow to over 120 by 2015.

That could intensify problems with LLP. Also, GM events can easily be combined or stacked by conventional cross-breeding, thus creating more new GMOs. 

The issue of IFA will also increase with more GM crops developed by technology providers in Asia for domestic markets.

The main problem of LLP is the economic risk of shipment rejections at the EU border, and part of this problem consists of the "destination risk" such as the official testing for unauthorised material only in the port of destination.

When compliance with a zero tolerance policy for LLP becomes impossible, exporters may only deal with "preferred buyers" who are known to create little problems. Otherwise, if the risk of rejection increases, so will the price. This will affect EU businesses that are dependent on cheap agricultural imports.