Little movement on labelling at ICCP-3
Delegates at the third meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (ICCP-3) on 22-26 April in The Hague, The Netherlands, made little progress regarding documentation requirements for shipments of living modified organisms (LMOs), largely revisiting the debates that had taken place during the negotiations of the Protocol and at ICCP-2 in December 2000.
As mandated in Article 18 of the Protocol (handling, transport, packaging and identification), delegates discussed detailed requirements for documentation accompanying shipments of LMOs for the use in food, feed and processing, which should be labelled as “may contain” LMOs and as not intended for release into the environment. Similarly to previous discussions, many countries, in particular the EU, China, Japan, Mexico and other countries representing centres of origin and diversity, supported the use of “unique identification” for documentation [i.e. a code identifying a transgenic plant line], citing the OECD system as a possible model. Others, however, most notably the US, Australia and Argentina — some of the world’s largest exporters of LMOs — favoured information requirements that did not go beyond the negotiated text. Argentina, supported by Brazil and Uruguay, furthermore stated that documentation requirements should not prevent commodity trade.
Regarding LMOs for contained use and for intentional release into the environment, delegates ended their discussions by referring back to the original text as proposed by the technical expert group on handling, transport, packaging and identification of LMOs, bracketing paragraphs where there was no agreement. Thus, once the Protocol enters into force, LMOs for contained use will at the minimum be labelled as “LMOs”, while LMOs for release will also require a brief description of the organism, including category, name, relevant traits including transgenic traits, and characteristics such as event(s) of transformation. It still remains to be decided whether documentation for LMOs to be released into the environment should also include a reference system of identification, such as unique identifiers, and “other requirements in accordance with the regulatory status of the LMO in the Party of import”. As one source pointed out, the latter provision might be used by importing countries justify the implementation of much higher standards or restrictions on the import of LMOs based on their national situation, which could potentially contravene the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT).
The lack of progress led many participants to speculate that the substantive decision-making necessary to resolve these and other contentious issues, such as compliance and liability, could only be achieved at the Meeting of the Parties (MOP) which will be held once the Protocol has entered into force (i.e. once the Protocol has been ratified by 50 Parties). As one source pointed out, the political strategy of leaving the most important and contentious items in brackets until after the Protocol enters into force might be that the Protocol will be ratified predominately by developing and European countries, all strong advocates of the Protocol and strict regulations on liability, compliance and documentation requirements. The MOP would then decide on the bracketed text, and would most likely leave the strongest language. To date, 17 countries have ratified or acceded to the Protocol.
Additional Resources
The documents of the meeting will be available on the CBD website shortly. For daily coverage and an analysis, see IISD Linkages.
Report Of The OECD Workshop On Unique Identification Systems For Transgenic Plants, June 2001, available on the OECD website.
For further background information on Labelling in the Biosafety Protocol and at the WTO, see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 4 April 2002.
ENB, Vol. 9, No. 244, 29 April 2002; ICTSD Internal Files.