Anderson, Kym; Jackson, Lee Ann --- "GMOs: Trade and Welfare Impacts of Current Policies and Prospects for Reform" [2012] ELECD 118; in McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku (eds), "Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement

Editor(s): McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848441163

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: GMOs: Trade and Welfare Impacts of Current Policies and Prospects for Reform

Author(s): Anderson, Kym; Jackson, Lee Ann

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

6 GMOs: trade and welfare impacts of
current policies and prospects for reform
Kym Anderson and Lee Ann Jackson


I. INTRODUCTION
The agricultural biotechnology revolution of the past two decades has
provided the world with an opportunity to rapidly accelerate growth in
the production of food, feed, fibre and biofuel crops as well as
livestock. Beginning in 1996, the area sown to crops with genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) grew to 148 million hectares by 2010,
currently spread over 29 countries but expected to involve 40 countries
by 2015 (James, 2009). This uptake is rapid even by the standards of the
last century, when hybrid varieties dramatically increased average corn
yields during the 1940s (Griliches, 1958) and dwarf varieties of high-
yielding wheat and rice caused what became known as the Green
Revolution in Asia and elsewhere from the 1960s onwards (Evenson
and Gollin, 2003). Yet this new technology's reach has been limited to
date by the reluctance of many countries to embrace it, ostensibly for
fear of its possible effects on the environment, on food safety, or on
access to markets in countries not yet at ease with GMOs.
Uncertainty about market access occurs due to the diverse
regulatory response countries have had to the environmental and food
safety aspects of these products. In the United States (US), GM crop
varieties were introduced to the food system in the mid-1990s without
any requirements for identifying their GMO content, allowing their
rapid adoption. By contrast in the 1990s the ...