USSEC Technical Issues Director Kim Nill, together with the American Soybean Association (ASA) and the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH), recently hosted a group of fifteen Associação de Produtores de Soja de Mato Grosso (APROSOJA) member farmers.  APROSOJA is one of the member organizations of ISGA (International Soybean Growers Alliance), which sent a group of grower leaders from the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay to Europe earlier this year to urge that the EU’s AgBiotech import approval process be sped up and based upon scientific criteria instead of the political vagaries that have caused innumerable World Trade Organization (WTO)-contravening delays for the past 16 years.

Presentations to the APROSOJA group and subsequent discussion covered the environmental and economic benefits of biotech soybeans, regulatory delays of biotech crop genetic event import approvals in the EU and China, how best to explain the safety and benefits of biotech soybeans to overseas government officials, and potential future funding of a WISHH project by APROSOJA.