World failing to monitor biotech trade: U.N.

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - The world is failing in efforts to control an international biotechnology trade ranging from genetically modified crops to the building blocks of biological weapons, a U.N. University study said on Tuesday.

The study said a lack of controls was "a potentially contributing factor to the spread of bioterrorism" -- the deliberate release of naturally-occurring or human-modified bacteria, viruses, toxins or other biological agents.

It said just $135 million, a fraction of the amount needed, had been spent on helping developing countries to build up skills to monitor a rising use of biotechnologies in the past 15 years.

Lack of training and knowledge is "so pervasive and broad that there is no effective international system of biosafety at the moment," according to the 238-page report by the Japan-based U.N. University Institute of Advanced Studies.

"The use and prevalence of biotechnology seems certain to increase, not least in agriculture," it said.

More than 100 developing nations lack the ability to implement the U.N.'s 2003 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, meant to help regulate trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) including crops such as maize, tomatoes, rice or soybeans.

Biotechnology has been held out as a way of helping poor nations, for instance with crops with higher yields or genetic traits that can withstand droughts that may become more frequent because of climate change.

BIODIVERSITY

Some countries, worried about GMOs that some environmentalists brand "Frankenfoods", have banned all biotech imports.

"A country that lacks capacity is more likely to bring in very restrictive systems in order to counterbalance its deficiencies," the report said, released during a May 19-30 U.N. meeting about biodiversity in Bonn, Germany.

The findings raised questions about "the extent to which capacity deficits are undermining the promise that advances in biotechnology would directly address the needs of the poor," said A.H. Zakri, head of the Institute of Advanced Studies.

"There may also be broader implications ... These may include an impaired ability to meet the challenges of global issues such as climate change, or to protect humans and the environment against biosecurity risks," he said in a statement.

Sam Johnston, one of four authors of the study, said many countries lacked officials to check shipments.

"It's just not working," he told Reuters of the Cartagena Protocol. "Outside Europe there is nothing effective. You end up with an ineffective, dysfunctional international regime."

He said it was almost impossible to buy GMO free soya anywhere in the world. "There is simply so much GM soy that it becomes contaminated," he said.