WTO Ruling Expected on Engineered Seeds

World Trade Organization judges may decide today that the European Union illegally keeps genetically engineered seeds by Monsanto Co. and DuPont Co. off shelves and out of fields.

The confidential ruling isn’t likely to force open the European market, where some governments are already fighting EU- wide rules. Still, it’s being closely watched by countries such as India, Japan, China and Australia for clues about how the WTO views rules that distinguish modified from traditional crops.

“This will be the bellwether case throughout the world of how biotechnology is going to be regulated,” said Christian Verschueren, director general of CropLife International of Brussels, which represents companies such as Monsanto.

The WTO ruling stems from a 2003 complaint about EU policies by three of the biggest biotech crop growers, the U.S., Argentina and Canada. The judgment, initially set for March 2005, has been delayed six times and is expected to contain several hundred pages of analysis.

With 242 million acres under arable production in the EU, second only to the U.S., the 25 nations grow less than 1% of the world’s genetically modified crops. Global biotech sales in 2006 will amount to $5.5 billion.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, says new laws since 2004 already allow the products to be planted, traced and labeled. It blames some EU governments for continuing to block approvals against a background in which more than half of the EU’s 450 million consumers are convinced that genetically engineered foods are “dangerous,” according to an EU poll in June.