At an annual bi-national meeting, senior U.S. trade officials pushed their counterparts from China for “a predictable, transparent and scientific” system for deciding whether to approve the import of genetically engineered crops. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that despite U.S. disappointment that more progress was not made at the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade discussions, the United States expects a Chinese agency to approve eight biotech strains at a meeting in December.
“Although China has made some progress, it has not fully implemented commitments on agricultural biotechnology that it made to the United States which date back as far as September 2015,” Vilsack said in a statement. 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. “During this JCCT, the United States requested that China commit to clarifying how its approval system for approving biotech traits will operate in a predictable, transparent, and scientific manner,” said Vilsack in a statement.
U.S. trade representative Michael Froman said officials made progress on several issues, “but challenging issues in our bilateral economic relationship remain.” Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker also pointed to significant challenges in trade between the world’s two largest economies.