Europe and USA move further apart on research priorities?
There has already been a backlash from the US administration on the adoption of a European Commission proposal on the labelling of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). The proposal, which calls for the labelling of GMOs from farm to fork, has received a hostile reception from the Bush administration, which has openly said that it will try to scupper the proposal before it is ratified by the European Parliament and Council. The labelling regulations were drawn up after consultation with the European Commission's Joint research centre (JRC) and are seen as a confidence building measure for European consumers. The assessment of the presence of GMOs will be undertaken by the new European food authority. The move fits in with the research priorities of the next Framework programme, which will investigate further into the fields of both genomes and food safety. But the US administration has claimed that the new regulations would unfairly discriminate against US products, which do not generally separate modified and conventional crops. In addition, the USA has one of the highest uses of GMOs in the world, with, for example, 75 per cent of its soybeans coming from genetically modified seeds. Campaigning against the regulation has been underway since even before the Commission adopted the proposal, with reports that President George W Bush discussed the issue with European leaders at the G8 meeting in Genoa in July. In addition, the Under-secretary of State, Alan Larson, recently spoke out against the regulation. He said: 'Obviously it's a very serious problem that affects a very important trade and one that's of vital interest to a very important constituency in the United States.' The US administration is worried that the European regulations will become a benchmark for other countries which are looking to monitor the presence of GMOs, such as Mexico. There was further evidence that GMOs remain a contentious issue in Europe at the end of August. A group of farmers, led by farm activist José Bové, destroyed a crop of genetically modified corn in the Drôme region of south east France. He left the crops outside a French government office, demanding that genetically modified crops be grown in restricted areas to prevent cross pollination with conventional crops. Further evidence of a divergence in research priorities between Europe and the USA came with the news at the end of August that the US space agency, NASA, is to scale back its monitoring of depletion of the ozone layer. While research on climate change remains an important element of the European Union's next research Framework programme, NASA said that a $1 billion dollar satellite mission to monitor the ozone layer was being scrapped in September because it was too expensive to keep running. The Upper atmosphere research satellite will either be captured by the space shuttle or allowed to crash to Earth, because NASA says that it cannot afford the annual running costs of $10 million.