U.S. officials repeatedly have prodded China for a faster and more open system for deciding whether to approve the import of new genetically engineered strains of crop. A U.S. business group says China is headed in the opposite direction by taking longer to approve a smaller number of GMO varieties — only one in 2016, reports Reuters.
The business group, the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said slow action by Beijing hinders international trade and suppresses the launch of new GMO varieties. In 2015, China approved three new stains for import. The American Chamber said approvals typically take six years in China, twice as long as other major nations.
Chinese approval is important because the world’s most populous country is the leading importer of soybeans and buys large quantities of grain for livestock feed. U.S. corn sales to China were disrupted for months in 2013 because China rejected cargoes that contained traces of a GE strain approved by U.S. regulators but not by China.
The strain approved by China in 2016 was a Bayer Cropsciences variety of soybeans, said the American Chamber. Either other strains were seeking approval. When U.S. and Chinese officials met last November at annual meeting on trade, then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the United States expected China to approve eight biotech strains before the end of the year.