By Rob Taylor
CANBERRA, March 3 (Reuters) - Growing suspicion of free trade and fears about high-tech new crops are threatening to prolong a food crisis threatening millions of the world's poor, Australia's Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said on Tuesday.
Burke, in an interview with Reuters, said protectionist trade moves amid global economic tumult and opposition to unfreezing world trade talks must be defeated if a long-running food crisis hitting parts of Africa and Asia was to be solved.
"The global food crisis has received less international attention because of the global recession, but the long-term pressures which bought it about have not changed," Burke said.
"No area of science should be ruled out in that regard, including Genetically Modified crops. I don't see how you run a moral argument against GM at the same time that 1 billion people are going hungry."
World Trade Organisation Director-General Pascal Lamy, in Australia to attend a commodities conference with Burke, told Reuters that "collective wisdom" must win over growing protectionism in the United States and Europe.
"Some believe that protectionism protects, which it doesn't. Jobs are not only on the import side, they are also on the export side. Pressure has to be exerted by members on members," Lamy said.
EXPORT HEAVYWEIGHT
Burke said Australia backed fellow food export heavyweight Brazil's plan to oppose trade protectionism at the Group of 20 meeting of leading economies in London next month. Canberra would also push for conclusion of the so-called Doha round of world trade talks, which collapsed in July after seven years of negotiations amid differences between rich and poor countries over trade liberalisation, he said.
"Australia's position is not only in Australia's interest, it's in the interests of the world, getting the world economy moving again and fighting our way out of a global recession," Burke said.
"One of the first changes that would help ease the global food crisis would be a successful outcome for Doha, and it's one of those occasions where your two major international issues can converge on the same policy response," he said.
Brazil urged leading economies on Monday to complete stalled global trade talks, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warning protectionism could tip the economic crisis into chaos. Burke, like Lula a strong backer of unfettered agricultural trade, said he had been shocked to hear the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, argue recently that trade was part of the global food security problem. The Doha talks collapsed after the European Union and United States opposed a push by India for safeguards allowing its government to block agricultural imports to protect farmers. (Additional reporting by James Regan in SYDNEY; Editing by David Fox)