The EU’s moratorium on genetically modified foods has ended, but country-specific clashes and possible WTO sanctions still loom.

The world's agricultural system stands at the shores of a technological Rubicon. On the near side, where most farmers toil today, new strains of crops are still largely the product of conventional hit-or-miss breeding. On the distant side, where the advance guard of farmers and seed companies already operates, a revolution in biotechnology awaits, in which scientists can control breeding and engineer new crops by splicing in genes from species near and far.

This paper seeks to place the divergent approaches of the European Union and United States toward the introduction and marketing of genetically modified (GM) foods and seeds in a broader context. It argues that an important key to understanding why Europe and the United States have chosen to regulate identical technologies in such a dissimilar fashion has to do with recent changes in politics of risk regulation in Europe.

The purpose of this report is to help create a more strategic policy on GM foods in the U.S. Its main product will be a major article that (a) articulates why the next generation of GM foods is a vitally important innovation, and (b) details policies for managing the environmental, health, trade, research and investment issues that arise in the GM food debate. Through a series of meetings in the U.S., along with efforts to catalyze a similar set of meetings in Europe, we will focus on the need for the specifics of a sensible long-term strategy.