Nearly 70 food and agriculture organizations signed on to an ag value chain coalition letter urging President Joe Biden and the administration to utilize the enforcement tools available to it under USMCA and request consultations with Mexico over its treatment of agricultural biotechnology to provide a framework and timeline to resolve this issue. A copy of the letter is below for reference.

For USMCA to function properly, the U.S.-Mexico relationship must be underpinned by science-based, functioning laws and regulatory bodies. In recent years, the Government of Mexico has eschewed its responsibilities.

Despite multiple engagements by the U.S. government to resolve this situation through negotiations, Mexico recently released a new decree that still wrongly calls into question the safety of agricultural biotechnology products for human consumption by creating a non-science-based distinction of corn used for food and corn used for feed and industrial uses.

Please contact Erick Lutt, [email protected] at BIO if you have any questions.

Ag Value Chain Coalition Letter to President Joe Biden Regarding Mexico’s Policies Restricting Agricultural Biotechnology

March xx, 2023

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:

As organizations representing America’s highly innovative and competitive food and agricultural value chain, we write to express our thanks for USTR’s announcement that it will begin technical consultations with Mexico concerning its action to ban imports of biotech corn.

We are disappointed that Mexico’s revised decree maintains policies related to agricultural technology, innovation and trade that are out of step with its commitments under the United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA). As such, we support your administration’s request for consultations with Mexico regarding its treatment of agricultural biotechnology and denying the use of certain crop protection tools, to provide a framework and timeline to resolve this issue.  We look forward to these consultations beginning promptly.

We appreciate the efforts of your administration to resolve this issue through negotiations, and Mexico’s efforts to narrow the scope of U.S. concerns. However, it is important to note that Mexico’s new decree issued on February 13, 2023, continues to limit the use of innovative agricultural tools, extends restrictions on safe crop protection products, and enacts barriers to trade. The new decree is inconsistent with USMCA obligations and fails to establish a science- and risk-based regulatory approval process for all agricultural biotechnology products and ignores the immediate need to establish a risk assessment process for gene editing technology. Without material scientific justification, the new decree draws a safety distinction between corn used for food and corn used for feed and industrial uses.

As your Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy, rightly noted, biotechnology is critical to achieve our climate goals, improve food security and sustainability, secure our supply chains, and grow the economy across all of America. Accomplishing these goals will require the U.S. government to address acute and systemic barriers that prevent growers from accessing innovative biotechnology.

The United States must use the dispute mechanisms afforded in trade agreements like the USMCA to ensure trade barriers or domestic policies do not limit the tools U.S. farmers have to sustainably produce food for our ever-growing world population. Sending a strong signal on enforcement will serve as a critical precedent for other trading partners.

Mr. President, we support your administration’s enforcement of a rules-based trading system for agricultural innovation and your efforts to stand up for American farmers, developers, traders, processors, manufacturers, and retailers.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Sincerely,

Cc:

Ambassador Katherine Tai, U.S. Trade Representative
Secretary Tom Vilsack, U.S. Department of Agriculture