The European Union’s decision to approve a genetically modified maize will not affect the United States’ challenge of EU biotech policy at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a U.S. spokesman said on Wednesday.

“The approval of this Bt-11 sweetcorn is not an end of the biotech moratorium, in our view,” said Ed Kemp, spokesman at the U.S. mission to the EU in Brussels. “The approval of a single product does not affect our WTO challenge,” he said.

The WTO set up a panel in March to deal with the complaint, which was filed by the United States, along with Canada and Argentina. A first hearing was expected in June and final report due in October, Kemp said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the EU’s executive body approved imports of Bt-11, a sweet maize for eating straight from the can and marketed by Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta. It was the EU’s first new GMO approval in more than five years.