GMW: US knowingly shipped banned food for a year/TAKE ALL U.S. RICE OFF SUPERMA

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GMW: US knowingly shipped banned food for a year/TAKE ALL

U.S. RICE OFF SUPERMARKET SHELVES

" GM WATCH " <info

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 12:04:35 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.US knowingly shipped banned food for a year

2.TAKE ALL U.S. RICE OFF SUPERMARKET SHELVES

 

COMMENT FROM MARK GRIFFITHS: Moral of the story? Don't buy foodstuffs

from the USA. They can't handle this technology.

 

Some other GM rice in the US has human genes in it.

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/humangenesrice.htm

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_060515_rice_gene.html

 

As events appear to have shown in recent years, the eating of GM food

can send the political judgement capacity of an entire nation into

severe

decline!

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1.Rice contaminated by GM has been on sale for months

US has been knowingly shipping banned food here all year. But only now

do they tell us

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Independent on Sunday, 27 August 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1222081.ece

 

Britons have unwittingly been eating banned GM rice imported from the

United States for months, if not years, food safety experts fear.

 

Imports of the rice were stopped by the European Commission (EC) on

Thursday. But investigations in the US show that it has long been

" wide-spread " in grain destined to be shipped overseas.

 

It was first discovered in January that the banned crop, which has

never received safety clearance, was contaminating export stocks of

long-grain rice. But it was not until nine days ago that the US

government

informed importing countries.

 

European governments are furious that the Bush administration delayed

warning them. And the row threatens ministers' plans for growing GM

crops in Britain.

 

The unauthorised rice, codenamed LLRICE601, was developed by Bayer

CropScience to tolerate weedkiller. It was tested on US farms between

1998

and 2001, but the company decided not to market it and never submitted

it for official approval.

 

In January, it was found to have contaminated rice from Arkansas-based

Riceland, the world's largest miller and marketer, which is responsible

for one-third of the entire US crop.

 

In May, Riceland tested samples from " several storage locations " ,

finding the contamination in a " significant " number. It concluded, in an

official statement, that it was " geographically dispersed and random "

throughout its rice-growing area.

 

Bayer officially notified the US government on 31 July. But it was a

further 18 days before the Bush administration told importers, informing

EU countries such as Britain just an hour before holding a press

conference to make details of the contamination public.

 

On Thursday, the EC prohibited any shipments from the US unless they

could be proved to be free of the banned rice. But it remains concerned

that Britons and other Europeans may have been eating it for months,

possibly years.

 

Britain has imported more than 42,000 tons of long-grain rice from the

US since January, when the problem was first discovered. No one knows

how much of this was contaminated, but the Food Standards Agency is

planning to carry out tests on rice that has yet to be sold to the public.

 

The Arkansas government suspects that the crisis began when pollen from

the rice tested on US farms spread to contaminate conventional crops.

This would mean that it has been present - and presumably been exported

- at least since 2001, when the trials stopped.

 

Richard Bell, the state's agriculture secretary, admits that the

contamination is " widespread " and predicts it will show up again in this

year's crop when it is harvested.

 

The Bush administration says that " there are no human health, food

safety or environmental concerns associated with this rice " . But the EC's

Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, says it

must not be allowed to enter the food chain.

 

Bayer, which had no part in exporting the contaminated rice, says it is

" co-operating closely " with the US authorities. But it says that while

the matter is being investigated, it cannot say when it first knew of

the problem.

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2.REQUEST TO SUPERMARKET CHIEFS: PLEASE TAKE ALL U.S. LONG-GRAIN RICE

OFF YOUR SHELVES

" Public health must come first. "

Press Statement from GM Free Cymru

26th August 2006

Immediate Release

 

An urgent request has been sent to the Chief Executives of all the UK

supermarket chains to protect the public by taking all products

containing long-grain rice from the southern United States off their

shelves,

pending unequivocal evidence that these products are free from

unauthorised GM contamination.

 

Last week it was revealed that samples of long-grain rice from

Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and other states had proved positive

when

tested for the unauthorised GM rice variety known as LL601, originally

developed by Bayer CropScience in 1997. The variety was then

abandoned in

2001, for unknown reasons. And yet it has appeared again, as a

contaminant in the southern states in 2006, causing huge concern

within the

American rice industry (1). The market price of long grain rice has

already fallen, and the industry is mounting a desperate reassurance

campaign; but according to Bill Reed, a spokesman for the Riceland

growers

cooperative " The positive results were geographically dispersed and

random throughout the southern rice-growing area. " (2) There are now

fears

that LL601 will also be found in California as well, since the GM

variety was tested there in 1997 and 1998 (3).

 

The EC was formally informed about the contamination incident on 18th

August, and it responded four days later by placing a ban on all future

imports of American long-grain rice unless they are accompanied by

export-point certification confirming that they are free of LL601

contaminants. In contrast, Japan immediately banned all US long-grain

rice

imports, whether or not accompanied by certification. The feeble EC

response has infuriated NGOs and consumer groups, since it is

inevitable that

rice containing LL601 is already on supermarket shelves (4). In the

UK, there has been no reaction to the latest scandal from either the Food

Standards Agency of from DEFRA, since Ministers and officials appear to

have gone to sleep for the summer.

 

Speaking for the GM watchdog group GM Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said:

" This latest GM contamination scandal is much more serious than the

Bt10 incident which made the headlines last year. For a start, American

long-grain rice is a primary food consumed in a virtually unprocessed

form by millions of consumers across the EU. It is also widely used in

baby food as a cereal, recommended for use early in the weaning process.

The samples which tested positive for LL601 were from export bins and

from bulk supplies intended for human consumption. The contaminated

rice was harvested last year, and the first positive test results were

given to Riceland and Bayer CropScience in January 2006. Since then, the

scandal has been hushed up by Bayer and by the American Agriculture

Department. During that time, American long-grain rice from the southern

Unites States has continued to be shipped to the EU at the rate of over

20,000 tonnes per month. That adds up to 140,000 tonnes. It is

absolutely certain that rice containing LL601 is already in the food

supply

chain, and it is outrageous that nobody is doing anything about it. In

our book that amounts to criminal negligence initially by Bayer and the

US Administration, and now by the EC and the UK Government as well. "

 

GM Free Cymru has reminded supermarket chiefs that LL601 has never been

authorised for commercial growing either in the USA or in the EU. It

has never been safety tested, in spite of assurances from the US

Secretary of Agriculture that it is " completely safe " . Since it was

abandoned in 2001 as a failed experimental GM variety, some experts

think that

it is genetically unstable and non-uniform. That means that the novel

proteins contained within it might, between 2001 and 2006, have become

" scrambled " in quite unpredictable ways. It is also a " Liberty Link "

variety designed to resist applications of the herbicide glufosinate

ammonium, applications of which can leave toxic traces on the harvested

crop. It is a neurotoxin which has been observed to cause defects in

unborn mammals (5).

 

Bayer claims that it has now developed a test which will identify

traces of LL601 in rice samples, and that their test method has been

verified by the US Agriculture Department (6). The test method will

also have

to be verified at the EU's Joint Research Centre before it is accepted

for certification purposes by the EC. " That could be a very protracted

process, " says Dr John, " and even when it is complete we need to bear

in mind that the test method may well have been carefully designed to

provide false negatives. The JRC is still not certain that the test

method developed last year during the Bt10 scandal is not fraudulent, and

we expect the same thing to happen this time round. We need to remember

that the testing of rice samples for GM contamination is not designed

to get after the truth, but to provide official reassurance. Even if

the test method is sound, you can conveniently " miss " widespread GM

contamination simply by adjusting your sampling methods. "

 

The NGO is now asking the supermarkets to specify what action they

propose to take. " If they say they will do nothing, or that product

recalls are deemed to be unnecessary, we want to know -- in detail --

what

their reasons are. This whole episode already stinks of cover-up,

evasion and damage limitation; if we are not careful, we could also

have a

major health crisis on our hands. "

 

ENDS

 

Contact:

Brian John, GM Free Cymru

Tel: 01239-820470

 

NOTES

 

(1)

http://westernfarmpress.com/news/08-25-rice-nervous-GMO/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1855528,00.html

 

(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/business/22rice.html?_r=1

 

(3) http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs/98_32901p.pdf

 

(4)

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEX/06/0404 & format=H\

TML & aged=0 & language=EN & guiLanguage=en

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/eu-restrictions-on-illega\

l-us

 

(5)

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/impacts_glufosinate_ammon.pdf#search=%22gl\

ufosinate%20ammonium%22

 

(6) http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2357926

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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