BIOTECH: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?

C O N F I D E N T I A L ROME 003687

SIPDIS


STATE PASS USTR FOR HUNTER, NOVELLI, MURPHY, MOWREY, SLOAN,
WHITE;
AGRICULTURE FOR DAVID HEGWOOD;
USDA/FAS/MACKE/JONES
WHITE HOUSE FOR NSC/NEC - GARY EDSON, JOHN CLOUD, T ERATH;
STATE FOR E - U/S LARSON,, EB - A/S WAYNE, KLEMM, MALAC,
EUR-PDAS
RIES, ENGLISH
USDOC C/N 4000/ITA/MAC/OAS/LASH
GENEVA FOR USTR

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/08/2013
TAGS: EAGR TSPL TBIO ETRD EAID IT EUN
SUBJECT: BIOTECH: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?

REF: A. (A) ROME 3481 (B)VATICAN 3584 (C) ROME 2331 (D)
BRUSSELS 3428

B. (E) MILAN 488 (F) MILAN 512 (G) MILAN 523 (H)
MILAN 539

Classified By: CDA Emil Skodon for reasons 1.5 B and D.

1.(U) This is an action message; see para 18.

SUMMARY

2.(C) In the last several weeks, we have noticed a
significant shift in the Italian approach to
biotechnology. More and more attention is being given
the practical issues of resolution - authorization
procedures, thresholds, co-existence guidelines-- and less
attention to ideological rhetoric with the notable
exception of the President of the Piedmont region. We
believe that by consistently bringing the consensus of
U.S., European, and prominent developing country scientists
to bear on the emotional arguments of biotech opponents in
Italy, including the Minister of Agriculture, we have
helped to shift the argument from whether biotechnology
should be allowed at all in Italy, to when and under which
circumstances. Despite seizures of corn fields in the
Italian north, the actual acreage destroyed is a tiny
percentage of the 1.2 million hectares under cultivation.
While the voices of opponents--farm group Coldiretti, far
left environmental groups like VAS--continue to be loud and
shrill, there is a growing temperance in the response of
government officials to the seizure of fields and
consequent injury to farmers.


3. (C) We believe the time is right to press Italy during
its EU presidency to account fully in its national laws for
the progress made at the European level (01/018, T&L; F&F),
to encourage early adoption of a seed thresholds package
for AP in conventional seeds acceptable to U.S.industry,
and to implement coexistence in such a way that Italian
farmers could plant EU-approved biotech seed varieties in
the next planting season, as Minister Alemanno has promised
(Ref A). Continued science-based arguments in public,
combined with tough political pressure on GOI officials
behind the scenes, will be needed to accomplish these
objectives. End Summary.

IS SCIENCE WEIGHING MORE HEAVILY IN ITALIAN POLICY
DELIBERATIONS?

4.(C) Milan reftels report the sequestration, testing, and
in some cases the destruction of corn plants thought to be
derived from conventional seed contaminated with low levels
of GM material. While no one is pleased to see these
seizures, which pander to the far left green organizations
and the defiantly anti-biotech farmers' organization
Coldiretti, two things have impressed us in our
conversations with officials and scientists. First is the
general view that the seizures must end because they serve
no health or environmental purpose and injure farmers. "Is
Ghigo (the President of the Piedmont Region) mad?", asks
his long time associate and our best friend at the Ministrt
of Environment, Director General Corrado Clini.
Nonetheless, Ghigo himself, in a "La Stampa" open letter
(Aug. 12) defended himself with respect to the seizures in
Piemonte, urging a precautionary approach. He repeated
often heard arguments for maintaining agricultural quality
and the risk of creating biotech seed monopolies in the
hands of a few multinationals.


5. (C) Our scientist friends have asked sharp questions
about how fields are being identified for sequestration and
testing, and in Emilia-Romagna, greater care was taken to
sample plants growing in the field for evidence of
transgenic specimens, and not simply to rush from tests for
AP of GM on seeds to destruction of crops. When we asked
about plant samples we were told how many plants, sample
preparation, and testing methods used in the lab. And,

according to some reports, fields sequestered in Friuli
were saved from destruction and converted into experimental
fields with the imprimatur of the Ministry of Agriculture.
In the Veneto region, where only a few fields have been
sequestered, the VAS, a radical green group, accused the
regional government of covering-up contamination, and
harming unknowing farmers. Still, no fields have been
destroyed. In the Tuscany region, legal progress is slowly
being made. On August 8, Judge Antonio Crivelli of the
Florence tribunal court denied the Tuscany region's request
to sequester GM fields in the province of Florence. The
judge cited that this case cannot be considered similar to
offenses like the addition of chemical additives or the
presence of residual plant insecticides. Involved were
seeds tested for GM presence to a threshold of 0.07
percent, deemed accidental and non-criminal.


6. (U) Also on August 12, in a near rebuke to Ghigo and
Piedmont, the Ministry of Agriculture agreed with officials
from the regions of Veneto, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Emilia
Romagna and Lombardia, to harvest corn in fields thought to
contain GM seeds, and only after harvesting and testing, to
decide whether the crop can be used for feed or will be
used for "non-food" biofuel applications. Note:
Significantly, the deal- which must still be reviewed at
the political level in the regions- was brokered by
Giuseppe Ambrosio, a key adviser to MINAG Alemanno.
Ambrosio is widely viewed as an opponent of biotechnology
and is closely associated with the interests of Coldiretti.
End Note.


7. (U) The daily "La Stampa" carried on August 13 several
reactions to Ghigo's open letter. MinAG Alemanno provided
a text which commends Ghigo for his understanding that the
issue of biotech is the issue of farmer and consumer
choice, but then goes on to mention the EC coexistence
guidelines, the upcoming Cancun WTO round, US-EU
differences on labelling, and concludes that firm rules are
needed to keep biotech and non-biotech production separate.
In the same article, former Minister of Agriculture Paolo
de Castro (and a speaker at the biotech program organized
by Consulate Naples last fall) argues that there are no
health or ethical concerns associated with biotech, and
that Italy should not make the same mistake with regard to
biotech that it made with nuclear powr (in 1987, by
national referendum, Italians votd post-Chernobyl to stop
the development of nuclear power plants). August Bocchini,
President of onfagricoltura, responded in plain words to
Ghig's fear of multinational control of biotech by saying
that if Italy doesn't get back into research, it will help
bring about a monopoly and a probable decline in Italian
agriculture. Only Coldiretti defended Ghigo's actions.

8.(C) As Ref A reported, even MinAg Alemanno comes to
meetings these days armed with tables of testing result
and schematic drawings with numerical thresholds for GM
presence in organic, conventional, and biotech agriculture.
While we do not believe this portends a clean break from
emotionalism to reason regarding biotech in the immediate
future, there is a shift from ideology to the nitty gritty
of numbers implied by the new EU rules on food and feed,
traceability and labeling, seed thresholds, and coexistence
guidelines.

9.(U) Even some press seems to be moving our way. Even
before the Ghigo open letter,the weekly magazine "I Tempi"
, produced by the pro-government, center-right daily "Il
Giornale", devoted back-to-back issues to GMOs, and two
weeks ago offered a "non-interview" with MinAG Alemanno,
who had promised to meet with the magazine on Monday July
26, but stood them up-- amusingly so, since he was meeting
with the Ambassador at the time of the scheduled
interview. The magazine has also raised the interesting
question of biotech organic agriculture in an article by
University of Milan Professor Francesco Sala. And the
announcement by Vatican officials of a meeting in November
to reconsider the position of the Catholic Church on

biotechnology (Ref b) has been widely reported in the
Italian press (despite clarifications from the Vatican) as
an imminent endorsement of biotechnology by the Church.
MINAG Alemanno has allowed that the Vatican move is an
important one, and will have to be considered--he wants to
talk.

10.(U) Despite the vehemence of the Coldiretti organization
of small landholding farmers, who recently cited a U.S.
survey showing most American consumers are opposed to GM
foods, Confagricoltura, the organization of big farmers,
has embraced the apparent Vatican change of heart and the
new EU rules coming into force to argue that Italy should
invest in biotech research and prepare the way now not just
for import of labeled biotech products into Italy, but for
the production of biotech products in Italy. And in an
analytical piece published August 5, we read how permitting
the import of biotech products (mostly feeds) into Italy,
while barring the cultivation of the same varieties in
Italy, may severely disadvantage Italian farmers.

IS OUTREACH TO SCIENTISTS HELPING US IN ITALY? YES, BUT
THERE ARE LIMITS

11.(SBU) As detailed ref (C),Mission Italy, USDA and USAID
joined forces at the end of May to support a major
international conference titled "From the Green Revolution
to the Gene Revolution" hosted by the University of
Bologna. More than three hundred scientists from more than
thirty countries attended, headlined by Nobel Peace prize
winner Norman Borlaug, and two World Food Prize laureates.
Swaminatham Monkombu, and Gurdev Khush. These three
scientists can legitimately claim to be the fathers of the
Green revolution, and they spoke vigorously to the
importance of biotechnology to global food security,
especially in the developing world where the number of new
mouths to feed is growing most rapidly The scientists
agreed that biotech foods were safe, that biotechnology
represented a consideralbe advance in precision and speed
of developing new plant and crop varieties, and that the
complex regulatory schemes imposed by governments
(especially in Europe) were pushing public sector research
into the hands of multinationals, and delaying the transfer
of benefits to farmers. Swiss scientist Ingo Potrykus
recounted in especially plain language the consequences
for children of the delays in approving the release of vitamin
A enhanced golden rice.

12.(SBU). The scientists included a number of
representatives from Africa and Asia who were supported by
USAID, and a dozen U.S. scientists supported by USDA and
Mission Rome's public affairs office. Consulates Milan and
Naples arranged programs for Dr. Ron Phillips and
Dr.Allison Snow, respectively, and Rome EST Counselor
traveled with Dr.Calvin Qualset to the University of Udine
for the first U.S. sponsored seminar in Friuli-Venezia
Giulia. EST COUNS also helped recruit the Minister of
Science and Technology from South Africa to attend the
meeting.


13. (SBU) The University of Bologna did a singularly and
perhaps deliberately poor job of mobilizing local press for
the event. Borlaug was featured positively in a feature
piece in Il Resto di Carlino, Bologna's major daily, but no
major papers covered the conference, despite energetic
approaches by public affairs in Rome. The important
closing remarks by the Minister of Science from South
Africa were not covered by the media at all. The
conference declaration may be found at:
http://137.204.42.130/doublehelix/index.html.

14.(SBU) The scientists agreed on three major points
important to our understanding of the role they are
prepared to play in supporting biotechnology in agriculture
in Italy and elsewhere. First, they do not see
biotechnology as the only, or even the most important tool
in improving world food supplies and the sustainability ofLLI, MURPHY,
MOWREY, SLOAN,
WHITE;
AGRICULTURE FOR DAVID HEGWOOD;
USDA/FAS/MACKE/JONES
WHITE HOUSE FOR NSC/NEC - GARY EDSON, JOHN CLOUD, T ERATH;
STATE FOR E - U/S LARSON,, EB - A/S WAYNE, KLEMM, MALAC,
EUR-PDAS
RIES, ENGLISH
US

global agriculture. They endorse biotechnology from the
perspective of the farmer and his (most often her)
livelihood, and from the environmental benefit of saving
more land from intensive agriculture. Second, they believe
governments, including the U.S. government, have failed to
support public funding for research, and this has by
default turned research over to industry, and limited the
targets of research to major crops--corn, cotton, soy, and
rape. Scientists like Roger Beachy from the Danforth
Center in St.Louis stressed the need of research on
agriculturally valuable crops of the developing world.
Last, scientists believe that three interlocking
factors--overly restrictive intellectual property rights
awarded to multinationals, low public confidence
(especially in Europe) in the motives of multinationals and
the competence of governmental authorities responsible for
food safety, and overly expensive and non-science based
approval and reulatory schemes -- are blocking farmer's
access to important biotech varieties in the developed and
developing world.


15. (C) Our experience with the Bologna conference, which
was a singular and brilliant scientific event, is that
scientists speak most confidently and even loudly among
themselves. Borlaug railed at modern Europeans who have
forgotten what it is like to feel hunger, and the audience
stood and applauded. Yet no press was in the room to be
similarly stirred, and no gains were made among the general
public, who paid more attention to the array of colorful
condoms and the "Peace for Food" slogans present at the
conference closing session than to the "Food for Peace"
slogan of the conference organizers. Still, we
strengthened the conviction of Italian researchers to speak
out against the anti-biotech policies of the GOI, and in
fact, University of Bologna scientist Roberto Tuberosa has
been writing and speaking out steadily since the May
conference, joining familiar Embassy and Consulate contacts
like University of Milan's Francesco Sala and Assobiotech
President Sergio Dompe who continue their efforts on behalf
of biotech in Italy. These are the same people in the
forefront of the corn seizures debate.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE NEXT?


16. (C) Mission Italy, and our sister missions--Embassy
Vatican and the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies-- have
worked together to combat the most ideological and
hard-line opponents of biotechnology by strengthening the
voices of the scientific communities, encouraging farm
organizations to consider the advantages of biotech for
their members, and arguing the case for employing
biotechnology to alleviate hunger in the developing world.
At the political level, the GOI has generally held us at
bay by saying a European level framework needed to precede
any Italian action to move forward on biotech. Whether or
not we like all the elements of the EU approach, they now
give us the tools to push the GOI hard at the political
level-- after the August vacation, of course--to live up to
their word and let consumers and farmers choose. There
seems to be recognition across the GOI that the EU rules
will require Italy to open its markets to biotech, and our
goal ought to be to get them to take that recognition
public, and in some sense take advantage of the very
communities and themes we have stressed to move quickly
from an anti-biotech to a more sensible and science-based
acceptance of the technology. In a government that cites
public opinion polls to us as a principal reason for
delaying progress on biotech, there is probably some
political understanding of how the government can act in
relation to polls.


17. (C) In short, our view is that we should press Italy to
bring itself in line with the EU and stop being a laggard.
This was the thrust of Ambassador Sembler's July 23
editorial, which was especially well received by scientists
involved in biotech policy in the GOI. In terms of
programming and strategy, it means we continue to work ourER, NOVELLI,
MURPHY, MOWREY, SLOAN,
WHITE;
AGRICULTURE FOR DAVID HEGWOOD;
USDA/FAS/MACKE/JONES
WHITE HOUSE FOR NSC/NEC - GARY EDSON, JOHN CLOUD, T ERATH;
STATE FOR E - U/S LARSON,, EB - A/S WAYNE, KLEMM, MALAC,
EUR-PDAS
RIES, ENGL

themes, but also to remind the GOI that it must also account for a
likely change in the position of the Church and be accountable
to the slightly less elevated authorit of Brusssels as well.


18. (C) ACTION REQUESTED: In order for us to craft an
effective strategy that is also fully in-line with U.S.
policy, we will need to know in a few weeks where we stand
on the EU food and feed and traceability and labeling
rules, and also where we will stand on AP thresholds for
conventional seeds if the EC scientific committee reports
out tolerances as expected in the mid-fall. As Brussels
3428 (ref D) points out, the likelihood is that T&L will
applied in January 2004 and and F&F in April of 2004,
assuming both are published in the Official Journal in
September. Last,and probably most important in the case of
Italy, we will need to develop clear and scientifically
sound positions on coexistence which take into account the
Italian view that organic, conventional, and biotech
agriculture must be managed under the precautionary
principle, and not under risk assessment procedures.
Washington guidance will be essential to our success.
Skodon


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2003ROME03687 - Classification: CONFIDENTIAL