Abstract

This paper focuses on the debate on the health, policy and legal regimes that require the special labeling of food, drugs and other products that contain genetically-modified-organisms. The paper examines national and international regulatory schemes on genetically-modified-organisms and the roles of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) conventions for non-restrictive global trade. This paper analyzes the scope, aims and objectives of the proposed international Biosafety Protocol in line with the overarching goals of GATT/WTO. The paper concludes that the food industry and individual producers should have the liberty to decide whether to label the genetically-modified products because having regulations based on consumer anxiety without any scientific evidence of harm violates the GATT objectives.

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