Scientists' ability to alter the molecular genetics of organisms far outstrips their capacity to predict the consequences of these alterations.

The infant science of ecology is underequipped to predict the complex interactions between engineered organisms and extant ones.

Our knowledge of the nutritional effects of genetic engineering is deeply inadequate. Genetically engineered foods may inadvertently trigger massive and serious allergies, and they may unintentionally introduce toxins into the food supply.

Even at the molecular level, unknows abound. Foreign gene insertions may change the expression of other genes in unforeseeable ways. The very techniques used to effect the incorporation of foreign genetic material in traditional food plants may make those genes susceptible to further unwanted exchanges with other organisms. The risk to biodiversity and the prospects of biological pollution are high.

Frankenfoods

Yet corporate promoters, led by Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis, are racing to be first in genetically engineered product markets. Using crudely limited trial-and-error techniques, they are playing a guessing game with the environment of flora and fauna, with immensely intricate genetic organisms and with their customers on farms and grocery stores.

The creation of pervasive uncertainty affecting billions of people and the planet should invite, at least, a greater assumption of the burden of proof by corporate instigators that their products are safe.

This is where the WTO exerts its influence.

Better Safe than Sorry? Not at the WTO

The WTO is structurally biased against precautionary action. Neither the U.S. government nor anyone else can present scientific evidence that the products are in fact safe (with the U.S. skirting safety testing requirements by declaring genetically engineered food the "equivalent" of conventional foods).

But the WTO's overweening corporate bias empowers U.S. government officials to demand on penalty of WTO challenges and potential sanctions that other nations justify their biotech labeling requirements and restrictions with "sound science" showing genetically engineered foods and products are unsafe.

And applying this logic, a WTO tribunal ruled against the European Union when it tried to ban the imports of artificial hormone-treated U.S. beef. The European ban was not backed up by any international standard or a WTO-approved risk assessment, and that was enough for it to be ruled WTO-invalid, notwithstanding the common sense desire by the Europeans to act to avoid unknown and unnecessary risks.

A de facto ban on the introduction of new genetically engineered foods in Europe, and potentially in other countries, may soon be subject to a similar ruling.

Labeling at Risk

WTO rules even may permit successful challenges to biotech labeling requirements. Just as the Clinton administration has argued against labeling of biotech foods in the United States on the grounds that they are "equivalent" to conventional foods, so it argues that other countries' initiatives to label genetically altered foods is not based on international standards or on sound science, and is therefore WTO-illegal.

Nothing could more clearly reveal the upside-down corporatized logic of the WTO: in the absence of anything remotely resembling sufficient science on the effects of genetic engineering, countries that take conservative, precautionary measures to limit biotech's risks are operating in violation of WTO rules.

Under the WTO regime, these countries must either abandon their precautionary efforts, or, if they want to maintain laws and regulations to protect public health and ecosystems from large unknowns, pay perpetual fines or accept perpetual trade sanctions.

Is this what is left of national self-determination?

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