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Speaking today in Port Louis, Mauritius to an audience of African Trade Ministers, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has called on ACP and G90 developing countries to play a key role in the ongoing DDA trade negotiations.

The U.S. may push Africa to accept gene-altered (GMO) food now that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled the EU broke rules by barring GMO foods and seeds, but Africans vowed on Wednesday to resist.

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Trade ministers from 18 countries and the European Union, at an informal meeting (27-28 January) on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, have agreed on a timetable of steps that need to be taken to meet the deadlines set at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference.

The World Trade Organization ruled yesterday that a six-year European ban on genetically engineered crops violates international trade rules, according to U.S. sources familiar with the ruling.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace have made the conclusions of the WTO dispute on genetically modified organisms public in order to allow the whole world to engage in the debate on the future of our food.

When scores of activists dressed as turtles appeared on the streets of Seattle during the disastrous World Trade Organisation meeting in 1999, it became clear that the WTO had inadvertently backed into the gunsights of environmental campaigners.

The World Trade Organisation, in a closely watched ruling, decreed on Tuesday that the European Union and six member states had broken trade rules by barring entry to genetically modified crops and foods.

Biotech industry groups hailed a world trade ruling on Tuesday that condemned the European Union over its policy on genetically modified (GMO) crops and foods, while green groups blasted it as a direct attack on democracy.

A group of ten developing countries at the NAMA (Non-Agricultural Market Access) negotiations has called for policy space for their national industrial development priorities.