St. Louis, Missouri
September 11, 2008
The American Soybean
Association (ASA) is being credited with playing a key role
in defeating a ban in Poland that was to prohibit import,
production and use of animal feed derived from biotech crops by
August 12, 2008. Avoiding this ban prevented the disruption of
U.S. soybean exports to the European Union (EU) generally, and
exports of U.S. manufactured feed to Poland, worth $100 million
annually.
"The GM feed ban was defeated by a coalition of the Polish Feed
Millers, Poultry Association, and Pork Association, and U.S.
trade associations, led by the American Soybean Association, and
diplomatic representations including the Governments of the
United States, Argentina, and Canada," reports Eric Wenberg,
Agricultural Counselor in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
(USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) Office of Agricultural
Affairs at the American Embassy in Warsaw.
"This success has also triggered a greater appreciation in
Poland’s farm sector for starting a healthy, progressive debate
on biotechnology, a key ASA objective in Europe," said ASA
President John Hoffman, a soybean producer from Waterloo, Iowa.
"Poland’s negative voting record in Brussels has contributed to
the delays in approving new U.S. biotechnology crops for
export."
The ASA, supported by FAS Warsaw, played a key role in defeating
the ban as a spillover effect from the ASA’s work to highlight
the problem of delayed EU approval of new biotechnology soybean
varieties for use in animal feeds, the so-called "asynchronous
approval problem."
"The educational activities of the American Soybean Association
and FAS Warsaw helped Polish industry get the ammunition they
needed to beat the feed ban and has left in place a coalition of
contacts working hard to improve EU biotechnology policy
generally," said Wenberg. "The feed ban would have jeopardized
roughly $6.4 billion in Polish pork or poultry production, not
including losses for feed compounders."
Teams representing ASA’s Biotech Advocacy and Education program
visited Poland in October 2007 and February 2008 on itineraries
organized in conjunction with FAS Warsaw to work with Polish
importers and the feed industry on the asynchronous approval
issue.
"This asynchronous problem, if left unsolved, could lead to the
loss of an $800 million market for American soybeans in 2009, as
delayed EU approvals of new biotech soybean events would mean
these traits would not be authorized for import into EU member
states," Wenberg said.
On July 27, 2008, just two weeks before a ban would have gone
into effect, Poland’s President Lech Aleksander Kaczyński signed
a law pushing back the introduction of a ban to 2013,
effectively killing the legislation. Defeating the ban also
benefited major U.S-based multinationals with investments in
Polish agriculture that might have imploded without access to
quality, cost-competitive feeds.
Since 2006, Poland has professed an official anti-biotech
position, consistently opposes EU approval of new biotech
products, and announced that Poland should be a "GM-free"
country. The government banned the sale and registration of
biotech seeds in mid-2006.
"Our success in Poland is a great example showing how the FAS
and cooperators like ASA work together to open and maintain
markets for U.S. agricultural exports," Hoffman said. "During
the more than 50 years that ASA has been partnering with USDA to
implement international marketing programs, the American Soybean
Association has built worldwide recognition and an excellent
reputation for helping our customers benefit from the quality
and safety of U.S. soybeans and soybean products."
The American Soybean Association is the policy, domestic
marketing, new uses, research and international marketing
advocate of the U.S. soybean farmer. ASA is a membership
organization representing 26,000 soybean producers. It's mission
is to improve U.S. soybean farmer profitability. |
|
