The country's ratification of an international agreement regulating trans-boundary shipments of genetically modified agricultural products will cost both farmers and consumers, said international consultants for agricultural trade.

In a presentation to the conference on Biosafety Policy Options for the Asia Pacific Economic Council (APEC) Economies, Raul Montemayor, a consultant for the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, said that the country's expected ratification of the 2003 Cartagena Protocol will require it to meet new agricultural trade standards and testing protocols, which entail cost.

The biosafety protocol on commodity trade provided under the Cartagena Protocol will require testing of cargoes for Living Modified Organisms (LMOs) or unprocessed genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Stemming from the mother agreement - the Convention on Biological Diversity - it seeks to protect countries from possible environmental backlashes of the entry of GMOs.

Mr. Montemayor explained that countries which want to maintain a GMO- free environment must abide by the standards of the Protocol and install system changes with, for example, its transport handling of products.

"The cost of doing these system changes will be borne by the importers and will eventually be passed on to consumers or it may be passed on to farmers. This will be the cost of protecting the local environment, so we can't help but apply the costs if we accede to the agreement," said Mr. Montemayor.

He said a case study on US and Argentine maize exports showed the cost to identify and quantify LMO presence in about 3,500 cargoes annually amounts to about $7 million using a one-sample-per-cargo-test. A testing protocol using 20 samples per cargo will raise costs to as much as $152 million annually.