US embassy cable - 03ROME3687

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