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A Delay in Suits on Genetically Modified Food
Posted by Steven Wu on Wednesday, February 05 @ 14:36:24 EST News
The New York Times reports that the US government has postoned filing a suit against the European Union for banning genetically modified foods. The reason? According to a senior White House official, "There is no point in testing Europeans on food while they are being tested on Iraq."

(As a side note, Tom Friedman had an interesting column last week that begins with an amusing observation about the Europeans' dislike of genetically modified foods.)

 
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Re: A Delay in Suits on Genetically Modified Food (Score: 1)
by jonathanweaver on Friday, February 07 @ 22:18:11 EST
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Tom Friedman's comment misses the point, as does the Bush administration.

Mr Friedman notes the lack of clinical evidence supporting Europeans' general distrust of GM food.

The US sells (lots of) food to Europe. Although the US buys (lots of) European food too, in the commerce at issue Europe is the customer.

What egregious EU behavior brought on this impending US suit?

They want to know which foodstuffs are GM.

Who cares whether that's logical? It's the EU's right not to buy food that doesn't meet EU labeling requirements.

The US government would rather just call this attitude anticompetitive -- which it is. So are all forms of regulation. If you don't care which foods are GM and which aren't, it is unfairly anticompetitive and actionable at the WTO.

But (lots of) Europeans do care. Deeply. European cultures -- even national identities -- are, broadly speaking, more intimately linked to food than those in the US. Europeans have lived with mad cow fear. For months, Europe's televisions and print media showed horrible images of burning animal carcasses piled high during the late hoof-and-mouth scare. Europe was irradiated by the accident at Chernobyl, and mutation worries have retained a sharpness to this day that public attitudes in the US lack. Genetic tampering is a threatening meme in most European households. Five decades of assertive governmental regulation have accustomed Europeans to expect that what they buy can be traced back to where and how it was produced.

Europeans and their governments are not simply 'trying to be whatever the Americans are not', as Mr Friedman claims. Rather, they are genuinely being what they are. That may or may not be less sensible than 'whatever the Americans are'; but it is never likely to be a detailed carbon copy of US attitudes and interests.

There's nothing wrong with believing that US attitudes and interests are the best ones, or even with declaiming flabbergasted disbelief that anyone could rationally arrive at a position inconsistent with such self-evidently-correct US attitudes.

But it's wrong to dismiss as 'not serious arguments' all expressed opinions that aren't yours. Those who take issue with what the US government says and does do not always do so just for the sake of contravention.


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