Franken Foods: US sent banned corn to Europe for four years

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GMW: US sent banned corn to Europe for four years

" GM WATCH " <info

 

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:38:39 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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US sent banned corn to Europe for four years

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

The Independent on Sunday, 17 April 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=630186

 

All imports of United States corn have been stopped at British ports

following the discovery that the US has been illegally exporting a banned

GM maize to Europe for the past four years.

 

The unprecedented move, which has angered the Bush administration,

follows efforts to hush up and play down the scandal on both sides of the

Atlantic. For weeks the official food watchdog failed to look for

imports of the maize, which is banned on health grounds. It has been

forced

to take action by the European Commission.

 

The two main opposition parties yesterday blamed the delay on a pro-GM

and pro-US bias in the Food Standards Agency, and pledged to correct it

if they came to power.

 

The scandal - the worst yet involving GM imports - centres around maize

named Bt [10], modified to repel a pest called the corn borer. It also

contains a gene conferring resistance to antibiotics. All such crops

are banned in Europe because of fears that the resistance could spread to

consumers via the food chain.

 

Syngenta, the biotech company that developed the maize, told the US

government last December that the crop had been grown over 37,000

acres of

the country since 2001, because it had been confused with a similar,

approved, maize. It was fined $375,000 (GBP200,000) for the blunder.

 

But the Bush administration failed for three months to inform European

customers that they were importing a banned maize. The scandal was

admitted only after it was exposed by the scientific magazine Nature,

on 22

March. Even then the US failed to mention that the maize contained the

gene for antibiotic resistance.

 

Europe is estimated to have imported about 1,000 tons of the banned

maize, as animal feed. The EC says it cannot eliminate danger to people

who consumed meat or dairy products from livestock. It has no idea where

in Europe the banned maize has gone or whether the US stopped exporting

it.

 

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said only " very

small " amounts of maize were involved, echoing a statement from

Syngenta, and there was " no actual indication " any had ended up in the

UK. The

Food Standards Agency refused pleas to try to identify the maize in

Britain. Its import was stopped on Friday and supplies in transit are

being tested at the ports.

 

 

 

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