They should not become centrally a negotiation about rules for trade. To the extent that it moves toward complex rules that would interfere with world food trade, the United States will not be able to support it. The upcoming round of talks follows a session of the conference of parties held last February in Cartagena, Colombia, where officials were unable to finalize the draft text of the Biosafety Protocol. The main areas of contention centered on trade issues, treatment of commodities and domestic versus international regulatory regimes. The full possibilities of biotechnology are only now emerging as research continues.
Modern biotechnology offers tremendous benefits for all of mankind.
He said scientists doing research in agricultural productivity in the developing world report that biotechnology provides opportunities for helping to improve nutrition for poor children by enhancing crops with Vitamin A and micronutrients. Researchers at the Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Biotechnology Program hope to increase rice production in Asia 20 percent by 2005, while minimizing environmental degradation. So all of these are important benefits of modern biotechnology. U.S. regulators have determined that foods developed by modern biotechnology do not differ in safety or quality in any uniform way from foods developed by other methods of plant breeding. But consumer groups in Europe and other major U.S. markets overseas have resisted the move towards GM foods, calling for further testing or labeling of foods that may contain GM material.