As countries around the world discuss the regulation of trade and transboundary movements of GMOs, as part of the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Montreal, lobby groups are busy trying to sway the direction of the talks.

A whole series of lobby groups are running side events to the negotiations, but reports on the work of the Working Groups in Montreal refer to the direct input of 3 lobby groups:

The GLOBAL INDUSTRY COALITION
The INTERNATIONAL GRAIN TRADE COALITION
The PUBLIC RESEARCH AND REGULATION INITIATIVE

See, for instance, the report on the negotiations for TUESDAY, 31 MAY 2005
http://www.iisd.ca/vol09/enb09317e.html

The GLOBAL INDUSTRY COALITION straightforwardly represents the biotechnology industry and everybody knows where they are cominmg from. By contrast, the other two lobby groups impacting on the Montreal negotiations claim not to be aligned with the biotech industry but to represent quite distinct interests and a special expertise.

Here we profile the International Grain Trade Coalition. For links to sources for this profile, go to the web page in the GM WATCH profiles directory.
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International Grain Trade Coalition (IGTC)
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=333

The International Grain Trade Coalition (IGTC) 'was formed in 2001 with the aim of influencing the negotiations on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety so that the Protocol was not established in a way that undermined the benefits of a low cost bulk handling system to transport commodities for the world's food, feed and processing industries.'

IGTC consists of 17 members that are said to represent commercial grain, feed and processing interests in major exporting and importing countries and regions. The 17 members are also said to represent approximately 1,000 individual companies in more than 80 countries.

However, while IGTC claims not to be a biotech industry grouping or to be promoting GM, a whole series of key members of the IGTC are from the main GM crop exporting countries - the United States, Canada and Argentina, eg the North American Export Grain Association, Canada Grains Council, US Grains Council, US Wheat Associates, Chamber of Grain Exporters of the Argentinean Republic, and America's National Corn Growers Association.

This is reflected in their focus. The U.S. Grains Council's, for instance, aims to develop export markets for U.S. grains as part of a U.S. effort to promote its agriculture's profitability. For this reason, the Grains Council's membership funds trigger matching market development funds from the U.S. government.

The U.S. Grains Council is also among several key members of IGTC which have either biotech industry members, biotech industry funding or are otherwise aligned with the industry. For instance, US Grains Council members include firms with biotech interests such as Monsanto Company, Monsanto/Corn States Hybrid Service, Syngenta Crop Protection , Syngenta Seeds, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer (a DuPont company), AgReliant Genetics, and Archer Daniels Midland. Another member, the American Farm Bureau Federation, is not only staunchly pro-GM in orientation but has a stock portfolio that includes Monsanto, Dupont, Novartis and Dow. (Rightwing business in farm overalls )

Another key member of the IGTC is the National Corn Growers Association. NCGA is a trade association with a direct financial interest in promoting US farm exports and achieving market acceptance for a key GM commodity (in 2005 it was projected that more than half of the corn planted in the United States would be GM corn).

Syngenta, Monsanto and others contributed about 11 percent of the National Corn Growers Association’s $7 million budget in fiscal year 2001. In 2001, the National Corn Growers Association worked with the biotech-industry backed Council for Biotechnology Information and the American Soybean Association to achieve "a unified message about the benefits of transgenic crops." (Source: CropChoice )

The chairman of the NCGA's biotechnology working group has said that, 'Getting information to customers about new biotechnology products and working with regulatory agencies to gain approval of them here and abroad, in order to open markets to U.S. farmers, is an important part of the work of the National Corn Growers Association'. (Source: CropChoice )

NCGA's biotech position includes supporting trade negotiations 'including the specific objective of regulatory synchronization and *mutual acceptance of biotech agricultural products*'. (emphasis added)

It is in this context that IGTC positions like opposition to the inclusion of the Precautionary Principle in the Cartagena Protocol need to be understood.