Abstract: . . .  demanded, the price will typically be lower. Some consumers with a weak antipathy to the GM product may, nevertheless, choose to consume that variety under the labelling regime because the price is lower than that of the non-GMF. There are no unambiguous conclusions with respect to the overall impact of labelling on consumers. With high segregation costs and/or weak consumer antipathy labelling may be inferior to no labelling. In other circumstances labelling will be superior. A labelling regime may also be better or worse overall than the initial pre-GMF situation for consumers taken as a group. 3.2. Environmental Concerns — Negative Public Goods As discussed previously, there is a second area . . .
. . .  or decline the shipment because of risks identified through a science-based risk assessment. This process is called “advanced informed agreement” (AIA). Although this seems straightforward, the protocol includes two features that may raise conflict in coming years. First, the text indicates that countries may in their reviews of GM foods consider “socio-economic factors” (e.g. the impact on Page 15 — 8 — local farmers), provided they respect their other international obligations. Second, the protocol includes a so-called “precautionary principle,” whereby countries do not have to have complete scientific certainty to block imports of a GM product that they fear . . .
. . .  APEC, MERCOSUR, etc. all predate the widespread commercialisation of GM agricultural crops. As a result there are few direct provisions in existing trade agreements that deal with the products of biotechnology . For example, in the WTO and its ancillary agreements, explicit mention of biotechnology is only made in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). This provision relates to a requirement for domestic regulatory regimes pertaining to intellectual property to provide protection to goods produced using biotechnology (Gaisford, et al ., 2002). As a result, what has been agreed in existing trade agreements may not be applicable to the change in circumstances . . .
. . .  science to inform a decision but allow other “political” factors to be used in establishing trade barriers (Isaac et al . 2002). Many WTO members fear that the “precautionary principle” would leave trade measures put in place under the SPS wide open to capture by traditional protectionist interests, which traditionally have been very influential in agriculture and, thus, they refuse to consider its inclusion. The inclusion of the precautionary principle in the BSP is one of the major reasons why there is a potential for conflict between agreements. If there is no health risk, then the WTO administered Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) is the appropriate venue to seek an exemption from . . .
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