Soybean shippers rattled by EU’s biotech label rules

Soybean shippers rattled by EU’s biotech label rules    Soybean shippers from the United States, Argentina and Brazil are upset by the European Union’s adoption of new rules calling for mandatory traceability and labeling for biotech and biotech-derived products.
   “These new rules are highly discriminatory and are so commercially infeasible that food manufacturers wanting to market their products in the EU will inevitably continue the trend to reformulate their products to remove biotech ingredients from their products rather than be stigmatized by a biotech rule,” said Ron Heck, vice president of the American Soybean Association.
   More than seven years ago, governments in Europe and in more than 30 other countries declared that biotech-enhanced soybeans are safe for human and animal consumption, and posed no environmental threat. The United States, Argentina and Brazil represent 90 percent of the world’s soybean export trade.
   American Soybean Association believes such process-based labeling could lead “massive fraud” and could “undermine public confidence in the EU food regulatory system.”