NEWS ABOUT GM ISSUES • August 2006

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31 August 2006

Food watchdog to clear banned US rice from shops

Irish Indedendent, 31 August 2006. By Aideen Sheehan.

BABYFOOD and other rice-based products on sale in Irish shops could contain banned genetically modified (GM) rice from the US.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced yesterday that it will test and remove from sale any unauthorised GM rice products discovered in a new EU-wide crackdown on imports of US long grain rice that have not been certified GM-free. But anti-GM campaigners warned that unauthorised GM rice could have already been on sale here for years and may have contaminated processed rice products such as baby food.

The FSAI is working with customs officials to find out how much long grain rice is imported into Ireland from the United States and send it back unless it has been certified to be free of GM strains. They said they would also test existing stocks of US rice and rice-based products already on the market for genetic modification and, if confirmed, would remove them from sale immediately.

The move comes as part of a new EU-wide ban on the sale of US long grain rice that has not been certified free of GM components.

The EU introduced the ban last week after the Bush administration alerted them that an unapproved GM strain of rice called "Liberty Link" LL 601 - was being illegally grown over there and could have got into exports destined for Europe. The FSAI stressed there were no immediate food safety issues from GM rice in the food chain but it had not been authorised for sale and should not be on the market.

"Consumers can be assured that this is not a food safety issue but is related to the presence of an unauthorised line of GM rice in the food chain which is not tolerated under EU law," said FSAI Chief Biotechnology Specialist Dr Pat O'Mahony. Babyfood made from rice would be among the products tested for GM ingredients, the scientist said.

The GM-Free Ireland Network however said this strain of GM rice had been tested in the US since 1998, meaning that contaminated imports could go back many years.

The owners - Bayer Crop Science - have now been hit with a massive lawsuit by rice farmers whose crops it contaminated even though it was never approved for commercial growth or consumption.

Official CSO figures show Ireland imported 34 different types of rice product from the US.

"This latest contamination scandal shows how easily European and Irish food are being contaminated by imports of both illegal and legal GM food and animal feed from the USA and other countries," said GM-Free Ireland spokesman Michael O'Callaghan.

"The fact that such contamination may have occurred for years without being discovered should be the final nail in the coffin of the unworkable EC and Irish government plans to allow the so-called co-existence of GM crops with conventional and organic farming," Mr O'Callaghan said.

The European Food Safety Authorities are currently assessing the safety of a related strain of GM rice, but it is also banned from going on sale here unless it is given the all-clear which will take some time.

Ferris: Survey Confirms Concerns Over Food Imports

Sinn Féin press release 31 August, 2006

The Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Agriculture and Food, Martin Ferris TD has said that a consumer survey published this morning by Agri Aware confirms the concern that has been expressed by many over the origin and standard of items on sale to the consumer. Less than 20% of those polled had full confidence in fresh imported food. This compares to almost 70% who are fully confident in domestically produced food.

The Kerry North TD said: "The survey confirms a number of things that have been highlighted by people involved in the Irish food sector over the past number of years, including food producers themselves. The main one is the belief that much of the food that this country is expected to open its markets to in no way conforms to the health and safety criteria expected of Irish and EU produce. This is especially true with regard to imported meat.

"The other concern is that food imports may affect consumer's health. The report cites more than a dozen reasons including freshness, disease, and the possibility that produce may be genetically modified, as to why Irish consumers have no confidence in imported food. Significantly, most people cited lack of trust in the information given about the product.

Given the huge confidence that Irish people have in Irish food it is crucial that the Government resist further attempts to swamp the market in inferior imports, and that it radically alters its stance on both the importation of genetically modified food imports, and moves to allow the growing of GM crops here."

When genetically modified plants go wild
Even advocates of these crops were shaken recently when GM plants 'escaped' from test areas

The Christian Science Monitor, Aug 31 2006. By Gregory M. Lamb.

In rice-growing states, traces of an unapproved genetically modified (GM) rice have been found mixed in with conventional rice meant for human consumption.

In Oregon, genetically engineered creeping bentgrass, being tested for possible use on golf courses, has been found miles outside its test beds, making it the first GM plant known to have escaped into the wild.

In Hawaii, a federal judge has admonished the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for displaying "utter disregard" for the state's endangered native plant species. The judge says the USDA failed to conduct research on the environmental effects of fields of experimental corn and sugarcane that had been genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals. Environmental and food-safety groups have asked for a moratorium on all field tests of experimental drug-producing plants until their safety precautions can be reviewed.

Early indications are that in each case little substantial harm has been done. The experimental rice, for example, is similar to two other GM strains already approved for general use.

But many who closely watch how biotechnology is changing agriculture, including those who see a valuable role for GM crops, are disturbed by what appears to be a series of recent incidents showing lax supervision of experimental plantings by the government and agribusinesses.

"You absolutely should be in compliance with regulations," says Martina Newell-McGloughlin, an internationally recognized advocate for the uses of biotechnology based in Davis, Calif. She directs the University of California's systemwide biotechnology program. The three incidents "aren't health concerns, but they are regulatory concerns," she says. "It's incumbent on the companies, on the USDA ... to ensure that everybody complies with these regulations."

The three incidents convey a message that "the US government has been somewhat lax in its oversight of the biotechnology industry and in some instances has not taken its responsibility to regulate as strongly as it should," says Gregory Jaffe, director of the biotechnology project for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group in Washington that has expressed qualified support for the use of genetic modification in agriculture.

"Clearly this shows that the companies and the government don't have as much control over experimental crops as they need to have," Mr. Jaffe says. "I think there's a sloppiness out there. Industry doesn't take the rules of conduct as seriously as it should."

Government agencies, he says, have adopted what almost amounts to a "don't look, don't find" policy. "We have a fairly passive regulatory system," he says, that does "a little spot checking" but mostly relies on businesses to step forward and report their own problems.

The cases of the escaped GM grass and the mysterious appearance of experimental rice in the food supply raise important questions, says Michael Fernandez, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonprofit group in Washington that seeks to be an independent and objective source of information on agricultural biotechnology. "How do you know that [GM crops] are staying where you want them to stay?" he asks. "As there are more kinds of genetically-engineered crops out there, it continues to pose challenges for companies and for regulators."

Some amount of movement of GM crops outside their containment areas "is virtually inevitable," Mr. Fernandez says. "The question is, how do we feel about that? How important is that? Does it matter what the crop is?" The bentgrass may pose no significant danger, he says, but "would we feel differently" if it were a plant that produced pharmaceuticals?

Last December, a report from the USDA's own Office of the Inspector General urged the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) division "to strengthen its accountability for field tests of [genetically enhanced] crops." The report added that "weaknesses in APHIS regulations and internal management controls increase the risk that regulated genetically engineered organisms (GEO) will inadvertently persist in the environment...."

The report also criticized APHIS for lacking "basic information about the field test sites it approves and is responsible for monitoring, including where and how the crops are being grown, and what becomes of them at the end of the field test."

In a response, APHIS agreed to implement 23 of the inspector general's 28 recommendations. Among those it rejected was a request to develop guidelines to physically restrict public access to unapproved edible GM crops.

US corn and cotton are mostly GM

America is awash in genetically modified crops that already have been approved for use both as animal feed and for human consumption. This year, 61 percent of all corn and 89 percent of all soybeans planted in the United States were GM varieties, the USDA estimates. More than 80 percent of the US cotton crop is also GM.

But despite that wide usage, the development of other applications and other crops has largely stalled. Plans to introduce a GM wheat to the market have yet to go forward. Nearly all widespread applications of GM to agriculture have been limited to two functions: enhancing resistance to insects or to herbicides. Plans to alter plants through genetic modification to improve such qualities as their flavor, growth rates, or size have yet to blossom.

Suspicion of GM foods in Europe, and to some extent in Asia, is limiting the world market for GM crops. China had been expected to OK the use of GM rice by now, but appears to be dragging its feet. After the news spread that unapproved GM long-grain rice had been found in US consumer supplies, the European Union announced it would require imports of long-grain rice from the US to be certified as free from the GM strain. Japan has suspended its imports of American long-grain rice pending further review.

Farmers sue over 'contaminated' rice

Earlier this month, the USDA reported that a long-grain GM rice strain produced by Bayer CropScience had been found in bins of conventional commercial rice. It marked the first instance in which an unapproved GM rice had been found in the rice supply. The GM rice poses no health or environmental threat, the USDA said. But rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas filed a lawsuit against Bayer this week alleging its genetically modified rice contaminated the crop, according to the Associated Press.

The USDA is conducting an investigation to determine how the contamination occurred, and Bayer now is petitioning to have the strain approved for general use, a spokesman for APHIS says.

In Oregon, APHIS is continuing to monitor the escaped creeping bentgrass, an APHIS spokeswoman says.

The ruling in Hawaii by a federal judge was the first to involve drug-producing GM plants. A coalition of consumer and environmental groups is asking that the government suspend all field tests of drug-producing plants until its process for issuing permits can be reviewed.

In addition, says Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a consumer group in Washington that is among those seeking a moratorium, the USDA should follow all the recommendations in its inspector general's report. It should also take additional measures, such as regularly testing fields neighboring GM test beds for potential contamination, he says.

But Dr. Newell-McGloughlin hopes that this summer's outbreak of GM fiascos won't be taken out of context.

"The few missteps that have occurred, in my opinion, are tiny in the context of the large amount of good that has been done with this [GM] technology," she says. Genetic manipulation has much more promise for good that has yet to be tapped. By overreacting, we could miss out." The risks, she says, always must be weighed against the benefits. "There is the cost of not doing something," she says.

Bedroom biotech
Like information technology before it, biotech is starting to spawn hackers

The Economist, 31 August 2006.

MANY a computer business has started in a garage or a teenager's bedroom. So, though, has many a computer virus. And where computing led, biotechnology may follow. As genetic information multiplies and the cost of hardware falls, biohackers are emerging.

Biohacking is not quite yet within the range of a teenager with a Saturday job and a parental allowance, but prices are falling. Using second-hand equipment a basic home-biotechnology laboratory could probably be put together for less than $50,000. Understandably, therefore, those biotechnology hobbyists who now exist are few in number. But that looks set to change.

The hordes of biology graduates leaving university hoping to become biotechnology start-up millionaires are the most likely to be tempted by homebrewed biotechnology. They are trained scientists who, for the most part, take the same precautions at home as they would in a university or industrial laboratory. And some have had success. Agribiotics, an agricultural biotechnology firm recently sold for §20m (then $24m), grew from a business run in the basement of a family home.

Encouraged in part by such stories, biotechnology is now becoming a hobby for all sorts of people. Websites such as DNAhack.com and magazines such as Biotech Hobbyist serve as guides to basic biotech procedures. One biotech hobbyist claims to have created a weed resistant to Roundup, America's most popular herbicide. Others have created skin-tissue cultures that glow colourfully under ultraviolet light by splicing in a gene from a species of coral. Some just clone trees.

The science is hard, but the computer revolution showed the tendency for people to jump on the bandwagon of a new technology, no matter the intellectual difficulties. Even toymakers have noticed the trend-the Discovery DNA Explorer, suitable for those over ten years old, helps children extract and map DNA.

If the trend persists, ethical issues and definite penalties for wrongdoing will probably be taught alongside practical techniques. The excitement of playing with the latest technology is hard to tame-but like any dangerous beast, it is best approached not with fear but with caution and a plan.

Sythetic biology: Life 2.0
The new science of synthetic biology is poised between hype and hope. But its time will soon come

The Economist, 31 August 2006.

IN 1965 few people outside Silicon Valley had heard of Gordon Moore. For that matter, no one at all had heard of Silicon Valley. The name did not exist and the orchards of Santa Clara county still brought forth apples, not Macintoshes. But Mr Moore could already discern the outlines. For 1965 was the year when he published the paper that gave birth to his famous "law" that the power of computers, as measured by the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip, would double every 18 months or so.

Four decades later, equally few people have heard of Rob Carlson. Dr Carlson is a researcher at the University of Washington, and some graphs of the growing efficiency of DNA synthesis that he drew a few years ago look suspiciously like the biological equivalent of Moore's law. By the end of the decade their practical upshot will, if they continue to hold true, be the power to synthesise a string of DNA the size of a human genome in a day.

At the moment, what passes for genetic engineering is mere pottering. It means moving genes one at a time from species to species so that bacteria can produce human proteins that are useful as drugs, and crops can produce bacterial proteins that are useful as insecticides. True engineering would involve more radical redesigns. But the Carlson curve (Dr Carlson disavows the name, but that may not stop it from sticking) is making that possible.

In the short run such engineering means assembling genes from different organisms to create new metabolic pathways or even new organisms. In the long run it might involve re-writing the genetic code altogether, to create things that are beyond the range of existing biology. These are enterprises far more worthy of the name of genetic engineering than today's tinkering. But since that name is taken, the field's pioneers have had to come up with a new one. They have dubbed their fledgling discipline "synthetic biology".

Truly intelligent design

One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And life, in his opinion, is a kludge.

No intelligent designer would have put the genomes of living organisms together in the way that evolution has. Some parts overlap, meaning that they cannot change jobs independently of one another. Others have lost their function but have not been removed, so they simply clutter things up. And there is no sense of organisation or hierarchy. That is because, unlike an engineer, evolution cannot go back to the drawing board, it can merely play with what already exists. Biologists, who seek merely to understand how life works, accept this. Engineers such as Dr Endy, who wish to change the way it works, do not. They want to start again.

So Dr Endy has developed an idea invented by Tom Knight, one of his colleagues at MIT. Dr Knight calls the idea "BioBricks". His inspiration was a children's toy called Lego. What makes Lego successful is that any part can attach to any other via a universal connector. A BioBrick is a strand of DNA that has universal connectors at each end. BioBricks can thus be linked together to form higher-level components and also joined into the DNA of a cell so that they can control its activity.

Dr Endy likes BioBricks because they promise the synthetic biologist the standardised set of parts that has been one of the advantages enjoyed by the electronic engineers behind Moore's law. If an engineer wants a particular component for a job, he can go to a catalogue, find a widget with the right parameters and order it from a supplier. He does not have to design it himself. He does not even have to know how it works. Dr Endy thinks BioBricks can put biologists in the same position.

The DNA of a BioBrick contains a combination of genes that acts as a standardised component. When translated into protein in a cell, it makes that cell do something-and that something is often more than just "make more of protein X". In particular, Dr Endy is interested in switches and control systems that regulate other genes. Such switches are the basis of electronics and he hopes they may one day become the basis of an industrialised synthetic biology.

At the moment, BioBricks, like Lego, are still a toy. They have been used for proof-of-principle studies such as taking photographs with films made of modified bacteria, but not yet for serious applications. But there are a lot of them around-many in the public domain at MIT's Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Such "open wetware" is one reason for the emergence of biohacking (see article).

Whether BioBricks will come to dominate the field remains to be seen. One difficulty they face is the cussed tendency of biological things to evolve. An electronic component, once designed, can be turned out reliably in a factory. BioBricks are bred, rather than made, and that introduces scope for error. Meanwhile, other researchers are content to work with things that more closely resemble natural components, although they still assemble them in unconventional ways.

A new synthesis

One of the leading proponents of this method is Jay Keasling, of the University of California, Berkeley, who also believes that synthetic biology will ultimately need standard, well-characterised parts if it is to thrive. But he is trying to get there via a practical project, rather than by generating lots of components and waiting for others to think of what to do with them.

Dr Keasling's project is to do biologically what no chemist has yet managed to accomplish-to synthesise an antimalarial drug called artemisinin cheaply. At the moment, artemisinin is a herbal remedy. It is extracted from Artemisia annua, a type of wormwood, and the best source is in China. Making artemisinin by standard chemistry requires so many steps that it is impractical. So Dr Keasling persuaded the Gates Foundation to back his idea for doing the job using synthetic biology.

For this, he has built a metabolic pathway in yeast cells that synthesises a chemical called artemisinic acid which chemists can easily convert into artemisinin. Some of the genes to do this have come from Artemisia, but others have been created from other sources.

Dr Keasling's project is not the only one to lay down artificial metabolic pathways. One goal of synthetic biology is to make what is known as cellulosic ethanol. At the moment, ethanol-whether for wine, beer or fuel-is made by fermenting sugar or starch. But even in crops such as sugar cane and maize, which have been bred for their high yields, a lot of the plant is wasted. Although yeast cannot digest cellulose or lignin, the molecules that form a plant's skeleton, some bacteria and other species of fungi are able to do the job. Identifying the genes for the enzymes that do this, modifying them and assembling them into new pathways would produce systems that could digest the whole plant and turn it into ethanol. Nancy Ho, of Purdue University, in Indiana, has already worked out a way to enable yeast cells to ferment the sugars produced by breaking down cellulose-which natural yeast cannot do.

This is important stuff. Cellulosic ethanol is the great hope of many environmentalists since its carbon, unlike that in fossil fuels, comes from the atmosphere and thus cannot make a net contribution to global warming when it returns there.

The ultimate proof of the success of synthetic biology, though, would be not merely an artificial metabolic pathway, but an artificial organism. That is the goal of Craig Venter. Dr Venter, the man who first sequenced the entire genome of a living creature (a bacterium) and then went on to run a private-enterprise rival to the publicly funded Human Genome Project, has re-invented himself again. This time he is synthesising genomes, rather than analysing them. Three years ago he made the first viable synthetic virus from off-the-shelf chemicals. (It is a parasite of bacteria, not humans.) Now he has a bacterial genome in his sights.

To make the task easier, Dr Venter is first creating what he and Hamilton Smith, his collaborator at the Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, call the minimal genome. This is a stripped-down bacterial genome that contains the smallest set of genes consistent with life in the cushy environment of a laboratory. Such a genome would have several advantages for synthetic biologists. First, being small, it would be easier to make. Second, it would not survive in the big, bad world outside the laboratory, should it chance to escape. Third, it would not dissipate its biochemical effort on non-essential tasks. That means it could be used as a platform on which to bolt commercially useful pathways.

According to Dr Venter, the raw materials for those pathways are abundant. As he observes, half the mass of living organisms on the planet is made of bacteria and these bacteria are divided into zillions of species with countless unidentified genes. For the past couple of years he has been sampling the oceans and collecting bacterial genes. He has identified about 6m.

Among them are, for example, 20,000 genes for hydrogen-metabolising proteins. That is of particular interest, since Dr Venter sees synthetic biology as a source of new energy-generating technologies-and he has the backing of America's Department of Energy to prove the point. He has also found numerous genes for versions of rhodopsin. In vertebrates this protein is found in retinal cells, where it transduces the energy of light into a nerve signal to the brain. What it is doing in so many bacteria is not known, though one possibility is signalling how deep they are in the ocean as a consequence of how dark it is. Whatever the cause, the energy conversion that rhodopsin brings about is also of interest.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it

Dr Venter reckons he will be able to synthesise a working bacterial genome from scratch within two years. More complex genomes, of the sort that make plants, animals and fungi, will take longer. But they, he thinks, should be possible within a decade. Even this definitive erasure of the distinction between the living and non-living worlds is not, however, the most radical idea in synthetic biology. Some people want to go beyond the toolkit that evolution has provided and create biological systems that work with a chemistry that is not found in natural living things.

Biology's operating system relies on two sorts of molecule: nucleic acids and amino acids. Nucleic acids (DNA and its cousin, RNA) act as information stores. The information they store is how to assemble amino acids into proteins, which are chains of linked amino acids. Proteins then go on to do the work of sustaining life. They manufacture other sorts of biological molecules, such as fats and sugars. They process energy. They provide structural support for cells.

One of the recurrent principles of evolution is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". That is why the kludges Dr Endy is trying to eliminate have endured across the millennia. Once the nucleic acid-amino acid operating system came into existence it could never be "fixed" into anything else by evolution, because the immediate consequences would have been so serious. But that does not mean it cannot be changed by an intelligent designer, and a number of such people are looking into how this might be done.

One obvious improvement would be to increase the number of amino acids that can be assembled into proteins. At the moment only 20 are used routinely in biology, but chemists can make thousands of others. Proteins containing those "non-biological" amino acids would have novel properties, and some of those properties might be useful. That, at least, is the thinking behind the attempt by Lei Wang, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, to extend the amino-acid parts set. Dr Wang's starting point is the redundancy of the genetic code used by nucleic acids. This code is spelled out in the genetic "letters" A, C, G and T, which correspond to chemical sub-units of nucleic acids. The letters are grouped into three-letter "words" known as codons, meaning that there are 64 of them. All but three of the codons correspond to particular amino acids, and the order of the codons in the nucleic acid corresponds to the order of the amino acids in the protein. The remaining three are signals that the protein is complete.

But, with more codons than amino acids, many amino acids have more than one codon to describe them. There is also a superfluity of stop signals. Dr Wang has managed to reassign one of the stop codons in E. coli, the bacterial workhorse of geneticists, to recognise an unnatural amino acid. This can now be incorporated into proteins made by the bacterium.

Peter Carr of MIT and Farren Isaacs of Harvard Medical School have an even more ambitious plan. They intend to recode E. coli completely, eliminating the redundant codons. They have settled on one codon for each natural amino acid and one for the stop signal and plan to go through the bacterium's entire genome replacing alternative codons with their chosen ones. The idea is that the cleaned up bacterium will be more efficient. That remains to be seen; natural selection has been working on E. coli for a long time, so whether two intelligent designers can do a better job is questionable. But if their new bacterium is at least viable, it will have 43 codons that can be re-assigned to other tasks.

The debate evolves

Where all this will lead is anybody's guess. But synthetic biologists themselves are aware of the risks. The most obvious is that somebody, whether a malicious biohacker or a political terrorist, will do something deliberately nasty. The other risk is that something will escape accidentally.

No technology is risk free, but synthetic biology has the twist that its mistakes can breed. Today the risks are not great. As David Baltimore, the president of the California Institute of Technology, observes, "nature is a very tough critic". Any organism modified in a laboratory is unlikely to make it in the outside world in competition with creatures toughened up by natural selection. Nevertheless, as knowledge increases, so will the risk that something truly nasty might be unleashed.

To avoid that and the opposite problem of hasty legislation to curb their activities, researchers are trying to get their retaliations in first by promoting public debate. Their historical model is the Asilomar conference of 1975, when the first biotechnologists met to agree on self-denying ordinances that went a long way towards establishing their credentials as responsible and trustworthy people. Despite initial fears, biotechnology has not, up to now, caused any serious problems.

A recent meeting of biosynthesists in Berkeley issued a discussion document; the Sloan Foundation has paid for a report, coming out soon, on the risks and social implications of synthetic biology. So far, perhaps surprisingly, the wider public has shown little interest. Perhaps it should.

Synthetic biology: Playing demigods
Synthetic biology needs to be monitored, but not stifled

The Economist, 31 August 2006.

THERE will be no thunderstorm, no bolts of lightning channelled through giant switchgear, and definitely no hunchbacks called Igor. But sometime soon a line will be crossed in a laboratory somewhere and the first unarguably living thing created from scratch by the hand of man will divide itself in two and begin to reproduce. When it does so, it will abolish, once and for all, a distinction as old as human thought: that between animate and inanimate matter.

It is not considered polite, in the circles of synthetic biology as the subject is known, to mention the "F" word. Yet behind almost every discussion of the ethics of modern biology lurks the grinning spectre of Mary Shelley's novel, "Frankenstein", a parable on the unintended consequences of creating life. In truth, there is not much that is ethically dubious about making a bacterium from scratch. Making life is less worrying than modifying life-and modifying it in ways that are accidentally or deliberately harmful to mankind.

Synthetic biology is more than the mere tinkering of biotechnology. That just moves single genes around. Synthetic biologists plan to move lots of genes and to industrialise the process in a way that will let people order biological parts as routinely as they order electrical components. If this vision is realised (and there is still a long way to go) biotechnology will become a true branch of engineering, with benefits for industry, medicine and agriculture (see article and article). But biotechnology will also become a game that almost anyone can play-for fun or profit; recklessly or responsibly; for good or ill.

Just as computing created a generation of bedroom and garage hackers in the 1980s, so synthetic biology will attract its hackers, too. That is already starting to happen and will happen more as the technology for synthesising DNA becomes cheaper. Generally, that is a good thing. The world has much to gain from an explosion of creativity similar to the computer boom sparked by those hackers when they reached working age. But as the benign hobby of computer hacking generated a small coterie of malicious hackers (or crackers, as they are known in the trade), so biological hacking risks generating biological crackers. To say nothing of the threat of political terrorism or the accidental release of experimental organisms.

Unbinding Prometheus

Synthetic biologists, still a small group, are aware of these risks and are already thinking about how to counter them. They know that if their field is to be accepted by a suspicious public they must invite scrutiny, rather than merely tolerating it. Some self-regulation is in place. Many firms that make DNA to order screen the requests they receive to see if they match known pathogens. A report on the ethical issues, commissioned by scientists and paid for by the Sloan Foundation, should be released soon. Nevertheless, considering the brouhaha that surrounds genetic engineering, synthetic biology has stirred up surprisingly little wider debate. What the scientists are afraid of is an unforeseen accident and its sudden regulatory consequences amid confusion and half-truths.

The risks this new field brings are real, but they should neither be exaggerated nor obscure its huge promise. At the moment a bioterrorist would be better advised to use an existing "weaponised" pathogen (there are plenty) than to make a new one from scratch. For a laboratory organism to survive in the harsh Darwinian outside world, it would have to be very carefully crafted indeed. That may change, and the world may well one day need a system of rules and controls. But "Frankenstein" was only a novel. Though it may have frightened people at the time, it has not come true. With a little forethought and oversight, fears about synthetic biology should turn out to be equally unfounded.

LibertyLink 601 found in LSU AgCenter foundation seed rice

LSU AcCenter Aug 31, 2006. By Bruce Schultz

Independent lab tests have confirmed a sample of 2003 foundation seed rice of the variety Cheniere grown by the LSU AgCenter contained a trace amount of genetic material from LL601 - a LibertyLink genetically modified rice.

The test results received Wednesday (Aug. 30), however, indicated Cheniere foundation seed grown in 2005 appeared to be free of Liberty Link 601.

Those tests, validated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, also indicated lots from 13 other varieties currently in the LSU AgCenter's foundation seed program also appeared to be free of LL601. The other varieties involved in the initial testing included Cocodrie, Cypress, Trenasse, Pirogue, Bengal, Jupiter, Clearfield 131 and Clearfield 161.

'We are conducting a thorough inquiry to determine how this happened,' said David Boethel, LSU AgCenter vice chancellor for research. 'We also are cooperating closely with officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in their investigation of the circumstances.'

The LSU AgCenter submitted samples to a testing lab soon after it was reported on Aug. 18 that trace amounts of LL601 were detected in samples of rice taken from Riceland Foods. The long-grain rice from Riceland came from the 2005 crop held in storage facilities in Arkansas and Missouri, according to the USDA, but the agency said it didn't know where the rice was grown.

LibertyLink lines of rice were developed by Bayer CropScience - to allow the Liberty herbicide to be sprayed on weeds without killing the rice plants. The USDA and the Food and Drug Administration have approved two LibertyLink lines similar to LL601, although those are not in commercial production, and federal authorities have concluded that LibertyLink rice poses no threat to food safety, human health or the environment.

Field research on LibertyLink was conducted in collaboration with Bayer CropScience at the LSU AgCenter's Rice Research Station near Crowley, La., from 1999 through 2001.

At the time, LibertyLink technology was in the developmental stages. The research was focused on addressing control of a perennial problem for farmers known as red rice, which is the major weed problem facing rice producers in the southern United States.

'Weed control is one of our biggest problems, and we saw LibertyLink as one of several solutions,' said Ernest Girouard, a rice grower from Kaplan, La., who also is chairman of the Louisiana Rice Research Board. 'Weeds can make a significant impact on yields and can make the difference between profitability and loss.

'Similar weed control technologies have had a significant positive impact on production of other crops.'

According to Steve Linscombe, a rice breeder who also serves as director of the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station, standards set by the USDA were followed strictly in the research with LL601, and the field plots of LibertyLink rice were isolated from other rice plants.

'In fact, we made sure the distance between the LibertyLink plots and other conventional rice plots was further apart than what the research protocols required,' Linscombe said. 'When there was a minimum requirement, we exceeded it.'

Further safeguards in the foundation seed protocols may also be what accounted for finding LL601 material in just one of the rice lots tested this month.

'The test results we received this week demonstrated that LL601 was found in the 2003 sample of Cheniere seed but not in 2005 seed,' Linscombe said. ' That is probably a result of the rigorous screening and selection employed in our foundation seed program.

'It may mean it has been eliminated from the variety, but further tests are needed, including those being conducted by APHIS.'

Commercial production of genetically modified crops has become common. The USDA estimates that more than 60 percent of corn, 83 percent of cotton and almost 89 percent of soybeans grown in the United States this year were genetically modified for various traits, including herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.

'The LSU AgCenter's foundation seed program has been extremely important to the U.S. rice industry. Over the years, the LSU AgCenter rice variety development program has released varieties that are among the most widely planted throughout the southern U.S. rice-growing area,' Boethel said.

Suspected unauthorised GMO rice in Netherlands

Reuters, 31 August 2006.

BRUSSELS, Aug 31 (Reuters) - A rice shipment suspected of containing an unauthorised GMO strain from the United States arrived in the Netherlands on Saturday but has not entered the market, the European Commission said.

"We do have a suspected positive case in Rotterdam," Commission spokesman Philip Tod told a news conference on Thursday, adding that Dutch authorities were testing the consignment.

"We also have been told by industry of another suspected positive case in New Orleans, but that has not left the U.S."

The shipment in Rotterdam also came from New Orleans and was partly destined for Britain and partly for Germany, he said.

Last week, the EU tightened requirements on U.S. long-grain rice imports to prove the absence of a genetically modified (GMO) strain known as LL Rice 601 marketed by Germany's Bayer AG (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) and produced in the United States.

The EU decision followed the discovery by U.S. authorities of trace amounts of LL Rice 601, engineered to resist a herbicide, in long-grain samples that were targeted for commercial use -- the first time this had happened.

"To my knowledge, the ship in Rotterdam is the only one which has arrived since adoption of the measure," Tod said.

"We have asked them to urgently conduct the necessary tests using the validated methods which they now have to give us a more accurate picture of this shipment."

The Commission, the executive arm of the 25-country European Union, hopes to have the test results within the next week.

More worrying for Brussels, the presence of the unauthorised strain in the U.S. commercial rice market may date back to early 2006, Tod said.

Last year, EU member states imported 300,000 tonnes of U.S. rice, with 85 percent being long grain.

"We can't rule out the possibility that contaminated rice has been imported into the EU," Tod said.

The EU's executive arm has already complained to Washington about its information policy that caused a near three-week delay in telling Brussels that traces of the unauthorised GMO had been found in the commercial rice.

GMO rice: Lawsuits, legislation, markets and frustrations

Delta Farm Press, 31 August 2006. By David Bennett, Farm Press Editorial Staff.


As president of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association, John Alter has had a busy couple of weeks. The Aug. 18 USDA announcement that tiny amounts of a Bayer genetically modified organism had been found in the U.S. rice supply sent rice prices down. Soon after, Alter's phone began ringing and it hasn't stopped since.

"The calls have flooded in. Mostly, (fellow farmers) are just trolling for information," says the Dewitt, Ark., producer whose own rice crop is nearing harvest. "Everyone is scrambling to find out something ó anything ó about this. They're angry and confused and no one knows what to do. For some reason, there's a lot of mystery surrounding this."

Although Delta Farm Press has been unable to confirm it, ARGA has reported Cocodrie and Cheniere are varieties harboring Bayer's LibertyLink trait. (Editor's note: to view that information, see www.arkansasricegrowers.com/archive_news.htm.)

On Aug. 29, Alter ó who also sits on the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board ó spoke about the current swirl of farmer worries, lawsuits, Bayer's response and proposed legislation. Among his comments:

Anything new going on?

"First thing: regardless of how this mess happened, this (LibertyLink) protein is a food-grade product. It's safe and hasn't caused an absolute tragedy like what would happen if pharma-rice outcrossed with the commercial crop.

"As for what's new, it's my understanding (industry leaders)Ö may try to use farmers' money like they did in 2000-2001 in the Mexican dumping case. To remind everyone, that's when approximately $700,000 of farmers' money was spent defending a single rice company. Those funds were spent for so-called 'market protection.'

"I hope they're not planning to go down the same road. No more money brought to the table by farmers needs to be spent for such thingsÖ Anyone thinking along those lines should know we're ahead of them this time, not behindÖ

"Also, comments have been made that this problem is widespread and throughout rice-producing areas. What science has been used (to make such conclusions)? I'm not disputing that may be the case. But if the research tests have been done, let us know what they were and when they occurred."

What about the information released by your organization stating that Cocodrie and Cheniere hold (the offending GMO traces)? How solid is that information?

"Respected researchers have told us they believe (the problem) isÖ in those two varieties. We have no way of knowing that (independently)... If a farmer (has those varieties), we were told it would be a good idea to try and keep them separate.

"If true, no one knows the end result of this information price-wise. Will there be premiums and/or discounts? One would imagine there would be, in light of the EU stance on thisÖ"

Can you characterize these researchers further?

"I've spoken with (them) off the record, so I have to be careful. But this comes from several (sources)Ö There's no way to (independently) confirm that without adequate testing.

"However, I understand the various research universities in the six rice-producing states have been asked to submit samples of their seed stock for testing. I don't know how far along that process is."

On common questions in the farming communityÖ

"Farmers continue to wonder why it took so long for the information to reach the (field). As an organization, we're standing back and waiting for the investigations to prove what they will.

"However, we hope any investigation looks at not only how this happened but if anyone ó any company, or companies ó profited from having knowledge farmers (weren't provided)Ö

"Farmers need a voice ó someone who speaks for them alone. It would be great if all rice industry segments were holding hands and skipping down the path together. But it's foolish to think that's always the case.

"If this LibertyLink situation isn't evidence of that, then there ain't a cow in Texas."

Is ARGA in contact with the USDA and APHIS?

"Yes. But let's put this in perspective.

"APHIS is the department within the USDA responsible for monitoring test plots and outdoor development, growing and transportation of GMOs. I have a copy of a GAO audit (of APHIS) from last year that wasn't very flattering about APHIS' ability to monitor (GMOs).

"It's scary to read the audit andÖ understand the lack of real oversight in place. We all assume someone is watching (GMO research) and protecting us. But this audit says APHIS doesn't have sufficient resources to do so."

On ARGA and its umbrella organization (US Rice Producers Association) being involved in recent Missouri and Arkansas GMO legislationÖ

"This (LibertyLink) situation doesn't surprise me at all.

"It will be two years in January that the ARGA was the sole organization that introduced legislation to regulate the transportation, outdoor growth of GMO rices. We told the Arkansas legislature then that this wasn't a matter of 'if' but 'when.'

"We weren't using scare tactics. But we know the practicality of growing any (GMO rice) outdoors in close proximity to a valuable, commercial rice crop is a serious danger. And now we've seen a fraction of what that danger can be.

"Thank God this GMO is a food-grade grain. It's safe (for consumption) and I believe the market with calm down. Of course, that's cold comfort. We can measure how far the market has fallen, but we can't measure the upside potential that's been lost. Who knows how much we really lost?

"But I know this: once again, the real loser is the farmer. No one in the rice business has lost any money except the farmer.

"The (GMO-related) bill that finally passed the Arkansas legislatureÖ hasn't been implemented. There have been no regulations written, no board appointed to oversee it.

"Right now, we're hardly better off than we were when the bill was passed almost two years ago."

"Let me be clear: the bill we introduced during the last Arkansas legislative session would not have prevented this LibertyLink event. There's no doubt about that. This LibertyLink situation was in the works well before that.

"The thing is, we don't know what's in the hopper right now. We don't know what's growing right now that's a risk to our crops next year and in coming years.

"Regardless, we all know Joe Farmer is the one who will really pay. That's why he needs be at any table when policy decisions (regarding GM rice) are made."

What about the lawsuits being filed? Is your organization considering a suit?

"ARGA hasn't entertained any legal action. It was our hope Bayer, by being a good corporate citizen, would short out the need for (such) suits.

"There have been plenty of rumblings of lawsuits for days. The fact that they've been filed isn't a surprise. And I expect a bunch more to be filed.

"I've been contacted by lawyers wanting to file. I've told them, 'At this time, I have no interest and neither does ARGA.'

"ARGA is in every rice-growing county in Arkansas. We have a good representation of rice growers and our membership continues to increase. We're gaining new members every day ó a lot through our newsletter. We've certainly seen an up-tick in memberships since this broke.

"We're here to protect farmers' interests in issues just like this. I expect we'll be very involved in how our check-off money is spent as it relates to this situation.

"Most farmers are angry because this hit them directly in the pocketbook. In the pastÖ most farmers just considered check-off money to be an automatic ó like walking into Wal-Mart and paying a tax for goods. You just pay it and don't question where it goes.

"Most didn't know they really can control those funds. It's very important when your money has something to do with influence over policy and laws."

Anything else?

"If farmers will be a little patient, it's our hope we'll all recoverÖ Things have a way of working out. We hope they will and that the market recovers.

"The financial strain on most farmers today is incredible. Hopefully, the market will offer us enough to reduce the pressure."

Efforts to take GMO control blocked

The Mendocino Beacon (California), 31 August 2006

Local food safety activists have apparently successfully led efforts to defeat a proposed new state law that would prevent other counties from following the lead of Mendocino County on genetically-modified (GM) farm crop regulation.

Mendocino County was specifically exempt from the effects of Senate Bill 1056. The bill was approved last week on a 46-19 vote in the California Assembly and sent back to the Senate, where it was approved previously. While the bill needed only a simple concurrence vote in the Senate, it was apparently blocked there. State Sen. Wes Chesbro's office told pleased local activists that the bill would not get a Senate vote this week, ending its chances this year, said Els Cooperrider, a leading proponent of the controversial Mendocino county ordinance restricting GMOs. The legislative session ended Thursday, the same day this newspaper was going to press. Local activists helped lead a statewide effort to lobby Sen. Don Perata, the Senate Pro Tem. Some reports credited Perata with killing the bill.

"What I know is that a bunch of us lobbied everyone we could think of. I called Mike Thompson to call Perata as well. I figured it couldn't hurt," said Cooperrider. "We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping Chesbro was right."

If signed into law by the governor as all sides had expected, the bill would have prevented individual counties or cities from banning the use of GM crops.

Mendocino became the first county in the United States to restrict the growing of genetically-modified organisms. Currently, there are three additional California counties and nearly 100 towns in New England which restrict the growing of GMOs, said Britt Bailey, director of Environmental Commons in Gualala.

"SB1056 strips local communities of their rights to shape their food systems [so that they] reflect the unique characteristics and features of their region," Bailey said.

The effect of moratoriums like the one passed in Mendocino County is precautionary in nature, Bailey explained.

"These communities have s?in essence pro-actively protected their local food supplies from possible genetic contamination which occurs when an engineered gene enters another species of crop or wild plant through cross-pollination," she said.

A genetically modified organism (GMO) is a man-made plant or animal created in a laboratory using genes from other species and patented for use in agriculture. The bill would prevent local regulation of GM seed and nursery stock.

Trinity and Marin counties have also passed ordinances restricting GMOs and would also have been exempt from the bill. Twelve other counties, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, have passed ordinances in support of GMOs. Santa Cruz Count yhas backpedaled on a plan passed earlier. Media reports said most of the opposition was coming from Mendocino and other areas that have already banned GMOs and would not be affected.

Supporters of SB1056 say the goal is to create guidelines for consistent statewide legislation on genetically-engineered crops.

"Agribusiness lobbyists such as Dow and Monsanto claim that this statewide preemption is necessary to create uniformity and consistent statewide regulation," Bailey said.

"However, the bill puts the state in the nonsensical position of preempting local authority and declaring that it occupies the entire field' on an issue - genetically modified crops - for which there is not one law or regulation on the books. SB1056 preempts to a statutory void," Bailey said.

After Mendocino County banned GMOs, conservative think tanks in the U.S. such as the Hoover Institution launched a large-scale effort to debunk the notion that there is any threat from so-called "Frankenfoods."

At the same time, Asian and European nations have been perplexed by the American enthusiasm for freshly created life forms and have restricted imports from the United States.

"The agricultural industry has been pushing state bills like this across the country to preempt local municipalities from having local control over food safety," said Toni Rizzo of Fort Bragg, a s?supporter of the Mendocino County GMO ban.

"It's another way that corporate money is used to stifle the democratic process and take away our right to control the quality of the food and environment in our communities."

The Assembly passage of SB1056 was a bi-partisan effort, which included Central Valley Democrats, who normally support environmental efforts, the publication Capitol Weekly News reported. Most of the Central Valley now grows genetically-modified foods, such as tomatoes bolstered by genes from cattle. Weeds have evolved resistance to nearly all pesticides and herbicides but when combined with animal genes, more toxic sprays can be used on weeds which then don't kill the farmed crops such as rice.

Genetically-modified crops can have significant impacts on the environment, the economy, and public health, Bailey claims.

Several recent incidents highlight risks associated with inadequate control of genetically modified crops, she said. On Aug. 5, it was reported that genetically-engineered herbicide-resistant bentgras swere discovered in the wild in Oregon.

Norman Ellstrand, University of California plant geneticist, said, "Such resistance could force land managers and government agencies ... to switch to nastier herbicides to control grasses and weeds."

In another blow for GMOs, USDA Secretary Mike Johanns announced that U.S. supplies of long-grain rice have been contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption, leading Japan, South Korea, and Europe to reject all U.S. long-grain rice, according to the Washington Post.

Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, whose district includes the coast, said she was disappointed that her colleagues approved SB1056 by Central Valley lawmaker Dean Florez.

Berg spoke against the bill, which passed despite opposition from environmental and local government interests.

"When counties in my district voted to restrict the use of GMO crops, I supported those efforts. I still support those efforts. I believe that people have a right to say what goes on in their counties, in their fields and near their homes. I oppose this bill, and I will oppose any bill that would strip from counties the right to restrict this technology," Berg said on the Assembly floor.

Florez said that some of the demands made by environmentalists in negotiations have been unreasonable ó most notably the suggestion that all fields with GM crops be covered in heavy plastic to prevent pollen from escaping. Much of Florez' district is already planted in genetically engineered crops, Capitol Weekly News reported.

"This bill may come back next year in a new suit. I'm sure it will," said Cooperrider.

For more information, see http://environmentalcommons.org/food-democracy-CA.html.

Experimental GE rice should be stopped at border

Press Release: New Zealand Green Party, 31 August 2006

New Zealand Food Safety Authority's refusal to take any precautionary action in response to the importation of an illegal, untested, experimental GE rice is leaving consumers vulnerable, the Green Party says.

"The Authority should have immediately moved to suspended imports of long grain rice from the United States and launched a programme to test the level of contamination in the product already here," Safe Food Spokesperson Sue Kedgley says.

Liberty Link Rice 601 (LL601) is experimental, genetically engineered rice. It has not been approved for consumption or cultivation anywhere in the world. Earlier this month the United States Department of Agriculture announced that commercial rice was contaminated with Liberty Link grains.

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority has confirmed that 'indications are that low levels' of the contaminated rice have been imported into New Zealand.

"Japan immediately suspended all imports of long-grain rice from the USA, and the European Union has announced it will not permit any shipments into Europe unless they carry a clearance certificate assuring that it is not contaminated," Ms Kedgley says.

"In New Zealand, however, the NZSFA is doing nothing except issue bland assurances that this rice 'poses no public health or food safety risk'. Given that this experimental rice has never undergone any safety tests, I want to know how the Authority can claim that it poses no public health or food safety risk?"

"The Food Safety Authority is mandated to protect consumers and ensure that illegal, unapproved food does not enter the food supply. It has failed abysmally in this case.

"This is a classic public relations response by the Food Safety Authority - downplay the risk and reassure consumers that there are no concerns. In this case it seems the Authority is more interested in not upsetting a trading partner than in protecting New Zealand consumers," Ms Kedgley says.

30 August 2006

EU still anxious for details on U.S. biotech rice

Reuters, Aug 30, 2006. By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS, Aug 30 (Reuters) - EU food safety authorities are still waiting for Washington to provide more details about an unauthorised biotech rice strain that may have crept into exports and fear the problem may be bigger than first feared.

Last week, the EU tightened requirements on U.S. long grain rice imports to prove the absence of a genetically modified (GMO) strain known as LL Rice 601 marketed by Germany's Bayer AG (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) and produced in the United States.

The EU decision followed the discovery by U.S. authorities of trace amounts of LL Rice 601, engineered to resist a herbicide, in long grain samples that were targeted for commercial use -- the first time this had happened.

EU food safety experts are still waiting for the United States to offer more details of how much GMO rice -- at the moment, no biotech rice strains may be imported or sold in the bloc -- may have entered European ports within other cargoes.

"We still have no formal information about the extent of the contamination, origin or timeframe for when this happened," one EU official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"But we have heard informally from the rice industry that their preliminary testing indicates that the contamination may be much more widespread than first thought," he said.

At present, the EU allows only imports of U.S. long grain rice tested by an accredited laboratory using a validated detection method. Shipments must be accompanied by a certificate assuring the absence of LL 601.

More worrying for Brussels, the presence of the unauthorised rice strain in the U.S. commercial rice market may have been known for some time, maybe since early 2006.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has already complained to Washington about its information policy that caused a near three-week delay in telling Brussels that traces of the unauthorised GMO were found in the commercial rice.

"We also understand, again informally, that this may have been known since January," the EU official said.

On July 31, U.S. agriculture and food safety authorities were notified that testing by Bayer CropScience, a Bayer unit, showed LL Rice 601 in rice bins in Arkansas and Missouri. The U.S. notified the European Commission on Aug. 18.

The same day, U.S. farmer cooperative Riceland Foods Inc. -- a major miller and exporter of U.S. rice and also a major soybean processor -- issued a statement saying that one of its rice customers had discovered GMO material back in January.

Bayer was contacted in early June and confirmed positive results for its herbicide-resistant trait in late July, it said.

The 25-country European Union imported 300,000 tonnes of U.S. rice last year, with 85 percent being long grain.

Questions abound as rice industry faces GMO concerns

Delta Farm Press, August 30 2006. By David Bennett

According to Dwight Roberts, on the afternoon of Aug. 18, "all hell broke loose" when USDA head Mike Johanns announced that trace amounts of GM rice had been found in the U.S supply.

"It will take some time to sort this out," said the U.S. Rice Producers Association (USRPA) president at the Missouri Rice Research and Demonstration Farm field day outside Glennonville, Mo. "This whole process is generating many rumors and stories. There are a bunch of unanswered questions that we've been trying to get answers toð The situation is extremely unfair to farmers. They were finally looking at a good rice price for the first time in many years."

According to Riceland Foods, the GMO material was discovered by an overseas customer.

"They contacted Riceland wanting an explanation. Riceland retained a portion of the sample and sent some of it to a lab. The lab found the samples tested positive for Bayer's (LibertyLink) herbicide resistance trait."

Since there's no known commercial production of GMO rice, "Riceland says they suspected the material would be identified as residual fragments."

In May, "Riceland then decided to collect samples from several grain storage locations. I'm told this happened in Missouri, Arkansas and elsewhere. A significant portion of those samples tested positive for the Bayer trait. The positive results, according to Riceland, were geographically dispersed and random throughout the U.S. rice-growing areas."

In early June, Bayer was contacted about the possible contamination. In late July, the company confirmed the positive results for their trait at .06 percent (about six kernels per 10,000). By law, Bayer was required to report its findings to the USDA within 24 hours.

Following USDA's announcement, the market reacted negatively.

"On (Aug. 21) the futures market fell 28 cents. (On Aug. 22), it fell the limit. Overnight trading was up a few cents but has since fallen. As of 15 minutes ago (on Aug. 23), November rice was down 7 cents, January was down 3 cents, November 2007 was down 9 cents and May 2007 was down 1 cent. This is not what we wanted to hear."

For losses on (Aug. 21 and Aug. 22) alone "we calculate farmers lost about $150 million. We feel farmers shouldnÇt take the brunt of this."

On Aug. 22, USRPA representatives met with USDA officials.

"We pushed them, saying, 'You must get to the bottom of this. It's fine to say you're looking out for the consumer and the rice is safe. But we've got some important issues from a price standpoint.'

"We told the USDA in a strong tone that they need to answer farmers' questions. How did it get started? What is the trail? How widespread is it?

"We need those answers so we can put an end to some of the rumors. This must be very clear and transparent."

There is some good news. Rice remains eligible for the USDA loan program and the Chicago Board of Trade has taken a position that even rice testing positive for the LibertyLink trait is deliverable against futures contracts.

In large measure, USDA wants to treat this as a commercial issue between buyers and sellers, said Roberts.

"We disagree with that. We want nothing that could be seen as self-serving. We must show the public and foreign buyers that we're dealing properly with this."

The European Union says it will allow U.S. rice imports (270,000 tons to 300,000 tons annually) to continue as long as a rigorous testing mechanism is in place. While tests have now been approved for finding the offending trait, Roberts says farmers shouldn't be saddled with the cost.

"Not just anyone can test for this. DNA testing is sophisticated and expensive. Farmers shouldn't be hit with a test that costs $200, or more."

And there are many other questions.

"We have a harvest coming. Will every truck be tested? Will loads be segregated? Will this blow over now and then explode later on? Why wasn't the material destroyed way back?"

Bayer, said Roberts, "must accept responsibility for this. They need to work with farmers to make it right. Congress and policymakers should think the same way. This must be corrected quickly. It can't be allowed to (fester).

"There is no good news with this. The mere mention of this last Friday launched a negative perception. And, in the rice markets, perception is everything."

e-mail: dbennett@farmpress.com

GE Rice Accidentally Allowed In New Zealand

GE free NZ in Food Environment Inc Press Release, 30 August 2006.

The Food Safety Authority admits unapproved genetically modified rice from the United States has been allowed to enter New Zealand, but says it is not thought to pose any risk.

It says small amounts of a variety called "liberty link" have been found in long grain rice imported from the US.

The rice has not been tested by the Food Safety Authority, but a spokesperson says it has been approved by other regulators, such as Food Standards Australia New Zealand.

The campaign group GE-Free New Zealand says the rice can produce toxins which are potentially dangerous to people's health, and it wants the rice recalled.

But the Food Safety Authority says it does not have any concerns for the safety of public health.

Food authority bans import of US GM rice

Irish Times, 30 August 2006.

A ban is to be placed on certain rice products imported into Ireland from the United States unless it can be proved they are free of genetically modified (GM) ingredients.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said today it would impose the ban on some long grain rice products unless they are accompanied by certificates to say they are GM free.

The body said it was part of an EU-wide move in response to notification by US authorities to the European Commission of the presence of "unauthorised GM rice" in commercial varieties on the US market.

It said that while there are no "immediate food safety issues" associated with the rice in the food chain, but that the GM line had not been authorised either in the US or the EU and should not be on the market.

So-called 'LL Rice 601' is one of a number of GM rice lines developed by the biotech company, Bayer that were engineered to tolerate the herbicide, glufosinate ammonium.

GM rice is not authorised in the EU, but the safety of one particular line in the US is currently being assessed by the European Food Safety Authority.

Dr. Pat O'Mahony, chief specialist, biotechnology, with the FSAI said: "Consumers can be assured that this is not a food safety issue but is related to the presence of an unauthorised line of GM rice in the food chain which is not tolerated under EU law.

"The FSAI has been in contact with Customs and Excise to determine the level of long grain rice product imports from the US, and to ensure that only long grain rice products with the proper clearance certificates are allowed into Ireland."

An anti-GM campaign group claimed, however, that the Bayer GM rice "may have contaminated the Irish and UK food chain for the past eight years".

Michael O'Callaghan, who co-ordinates the GM-free Ireland Network, representing 124 farm and food groups on the island, said: "This latest contamination scandal shows how easily European and Irish food are being contaminated by imports of both illegal and legal GM food and animal feed from the USA and other countries in North and South America.

"The fact that such contamination may have occurred for years without being discovered should be the final nail in the coffin of the unworkable EC and Irish Government plans to allow the so-called 'co-existence' of GM crops with conventional and organic farming.

"It makes a farce of the government's claim that one can keep GM and conventional foods separate from farm to fork. He also said Ireland should follow the lead of the EU's largest agricultural producer, Poland, and implement a blanket ban on GM seeds and crops with immediate effect."

In March, the Polish government said it was opposed to the cultivation of GM crops, but declared it was in favour of importing GM produce "on condition it is clearly marked, and providing there is no possibility it is transformed" into other products.

29 August 2006

US Oversight of Biotech Crops Seen Lacking

Reuters, 29 August 2006. By Carey GIllam.


KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Criticism is mounting over the US government's efforts to control experimental genetically modified crops in the wake of admissions that a discarded biotech rice has contaminated US commercial supplies.

The disclosure of the contamination of experimental biotech rice owned by Bayer CropScience, a unit of Bayer AG, coupled with statements by USDA officials that they have no idea how the contamination occurred or how extensive it may be, has outraged players up and down the food chain.

Farmers, food and beverage makers and exporters all are positioning themselves for a long, and likely costly, ordeal.

Already, Japan has suspended imports of US long grain rice because of the contamination, and Europe, a major export market for US rice, has insisted rice imports be tested and any contaminated rice excluded from shipments to the 25-member European Union.

Other US rice customers are also reportedly reviewing their planned purchases even as US rice prices have dropped sharply.

Meanwhile, with much of the US rice industry in turmoil because the extent of the contamination is unknown, an official with the USDA's Animal Health and Plant Health Inspection Service said it would likely take two to three months before the agency had many answers.

"This is real money that farmers are losing," said Arkansas Rice Growers Association executive director Greg Yielding, who said he has fielded dozens of calls from frantic rice farmers. "It is a big deal. We do not feel that USDA and APHIS have adequate funds or staff to do this job. They can't tell you where anything is even though they get permits for it."

Holes in oversight

Over the last decade, the USDA has approved applications for more than 49,000 field site tests of GMO crops and APHIS has deregulated more than 70 GMO crop lines, many of which have been embraced by farmers because they are easier and/or more profitable to grow.

USDA and APHIS have touted the government's ability to oversee the growth of biotechnology in agriculture and repeatedly assured consumer groups and foreign governments that safety was a foremost concern for regulators.

But an Office of Inspector General audit of APHIS' and its biotechnology regulatory services unit found numerous holes in oversight efforts and issued a stern warning in its December 2005 report.

It said APHIS lacks "basic information about the field test sites it approves and is responsible for monitoring, including where and how the crops are being grown and what becomes of them at the end of the field test."

The OIG said that even though APHIS was supposed to inspect experimental fields, it was not even requiring companies to provide site location information. The government did not require companies to document efforts to make sure GMO crops were segregated, and it didn't test neighboring fields to look for contamination during or after field trials.

The OIG also said it found widespread violations of a rule requiring experimental crops to be shipped in metal containers, instead allowing them to be shipped in boxes or bags.

Overall, the OIG audit found the APHIS regulatory system so weak that it increased the risk that experimental GMO crops would "persist in the environment."

The contaminated rice is only one example of unapproved GMO's slipping into the mainstream. Last year, Swiss agrochemicals firm Syngenta revealed that its unapproved, experimental strain of corn known as Bt10, was found to have contaminated corn supplies from 2001-2004.

Also, a biotech grass resistant to weedkiller developed in part by Monsanto Co. has been found growing in the wild, while ProdiGene Inc. had to buy back and destroy millions of dollars of grain after tainting crops with an experimental corn plant used to produce medicine.

And earlier this month, a US district judge ruled that APHIS broke environmental rules when it allowed the planting of certain biotech corn and sugarcane between 2001 and 2003 in Hawaii.

Moratorium sought

Because of the government oversight concerns, Greenpeace International has called for a ban on US GMO rice and the Center for Food Safety has said it wants a moratorium on all field tests of genetically modified crops until government oversight improves.

"There is all this stuff in writing to give you a sense of security but when you look at what they're actually doing, it's nothing," said Center for Food Safety scientist policy analyst Bill Freese.

Cindy Smith, deputy administrator for APHIS' biotechnology regulatory services acknowledged in an interview some issues with oversight, but said those problems were largely in the past and had been corrected or would be soon.

"You will likely continue to see the program evolve in different ways. As long as we're regulating this technology, we're going to have to continue to grow and expand and respond based on the nature of the technology," Smith said.

Illegal GMO rice on sale for years
EC bans imports of US rice
Contaminated US farmers sue Bayer CropScience
FSAI urged to recall suspect rice from supermarket shelves

GM free Ireland press release, 29 August 2006.

An illegal variety of genetically modified (GM) long-grain rice from experiments carried out by Bayer CropScience in the USA from 1998 to 2001 may have contaminated the Irish and UK food chain without detection for the past eight years. The contamination could also affect rice and processed rice products currently served in hotels and restaurants or sold by retailers, including rice flour and baby food recommended for infants in the weaning process.

The illegal GM rice, called Liberty Link (LL Rice 601) was developed by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the world's largest chemicals company BASF which cancelled a proposed experiment with 450,000 GMO potatoes in Co. Meath earlier this year [1]. The patented rice is genetically modified with genes from viruses and bacteria that make it resistant to a weed killer called Liberty, which contains 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 [2]. LL Rice 601 has not been approved for human consumption anywhere in the world

Although no GM rice of any kind is authorised for import, cultivation, or sale as food or animal feed in the European Union, member states did import 300,000 tonnes of U.S. rice in 2005, 85 percent of which is long grain husked, semi-milled and wholly-milled rice. The Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) said yesterday that U.S. rice imports enter the country through 34 different types of products from raw rice to processed foods, but neither the CSO nor the Department of Agriculture and Food could provide a ready figure for the quantities imported from the USA, but it appears that 939 tonnes of US rice has been imported since January 2005. As of this morning, no test is yet available to identify contamination.

Bayer released the GM rice for experiments on US farms in Arkansas and Missouri between 1998 and 2001 [3]. But the company decided not to market it and never submitted it for official approval. The reasons for the decision are not known, but independent scientists suspect it could be due to the fact that many GM crops are not uniform and are genetically unstable. [4]

The GM rice contamination was first discovered in January of this year [5]. Last week, the Arkansas government said it suspects 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 - since 1998, when the experiments began.

Bayer waited until 31 July before reporting the problem to the US authorities. But the Bush administration then waited a further three weeks before announcing the contamination on 18 August. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary Mike Johanns said his agency withheld the information while trying to validate a test that producers, shippers and customers could use to detect the illegal GMO. According to the USDA, "each test could cost as much as $300, but it is uncertain who would pay for the testing."

Bayer's response has been to apply to the USDA for a speedy retroactive legalisation of the banned GM rice, thereby transforming it from a contaminant to an administrative oversight [6]. This is a cynical action, since LL601 is a failed variety which has never been demonstrated to be either uniform or genetically stable. That means that the novel proteins contained within it might, between 1998 and 2006, have become scrambled in quite unpredictable ways. If the USDA connives in this retrospective deregulation, it will further discredit the US regulatory authorities which are known to have close ties with the biotech industry they are entrusted to regulate. [7]

Last week, tests revealed the contamination has spread from the original field tests in Arkansas and Missouri all the way to Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. There are now fears that it will also be found in California, since the GM variety was tested there in 1997 and 1998 and may have contaminated short-grain rice as well as the long-grain varieties identified so far. US rice farmers, who are currently harvesting their crop, are extremely worried by the economic impact of the contamination on the estimated $1.9 billion value of this year's US rice crop.

On Monday, rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California filed two class action lawsuits against Bayer CropScience for failing to prevent its illegal GMO rice from entering the food chain. The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as an injunction requiring Bayer to clean up the contamination from Bayer's genetically modified rice. Yesterday Bayer was hit by a further lawsuit seeking $275,000 per plaintiff plus punitive damages. [8]

EC bans GM rice imports from USA

The EC was formally informed about the contamination incident on 18th August, and it responded four days later on 24 August 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 [9].

The EC said that Member States authorities are responsible for controlling the imports at their borders and for preventing any contaminated consignments from being placed on the market. In addition, they should carry out controls on products already on the market, to ensure that they are free from LL Rice 601. The EC also said that business operators importing rice from the USA also have responsibility for ensuring that LL Rice 601 does not enter the EU food chain and that imports are certified as free from this unauthorised GMO, in accordance with the EU food law principle that operators are responsible for the safety of the food or feed that they place on the market.

In contrast, the Japanese government immediately banned all US long-grain rice imports, whether or not accompanied by certification. It also instructed Japanese companies not to process or sell any U.S. long-grain rice imported in recent months. Japan is the the second largest importer of rice from the US. South Korea was also said to be considering a ban last week.

This latest case of GM contamination follows a similar incident in March last year in which the biotech company Syngenta admitted to selling an experimental and illegal GM maize variety to US farmers for four years. [10]

But this time, and despite the international outcry, the European Commission said it would only impose testing and certification requirements on imports of U.S. long grain rice. The feeble EC response has infuriated NGOs and consumer groups, since it is inevitable that rice containing LL601 is already on supermarket shelves (11).

Can the regulatory authorities be trusted?

Today, eleven days after the EC was notified and five days after it issued the ban, there has still been no official reaction to the scandal from the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food or from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). As of last night, the latter has issued no warning or product recall notice to the Irish food industry or to the public.

In a telephone interview on Monday, FSAI Chief Biotechnology Specialist Dr. Pat O'Mahony said that if a validation test becomes available later this week, FSAI would then require random tests of US rice at border points. He said FSAI has no plans to require comprehensive testing of rice products already on supermarket shelves, and does not plan to recall long-grain US rice products unless there is more evidence that the illegal rice does pose a health risk. Dr O'Mahony added that the illegal GM rice "has zero health risks as far as I can see".

This echoes the repeated claim by U.S. authorities and the biotech industry that GM foods pose no risk to public health or the environment, despite no long-term health studies, and growing scientific evidence of deaths and disease attributable to GM food in laboratory animals, livestock and the human population [12]. The CEO of the FSAI, Dr. John O'Brien, is a former director of a biotech industry lobby group which claims GM food is safe [13].

Speaking about Bayer's illegal GM rice last week, a European Commission official said "We do not share the view of the U.S. that there is no risk. We are still missing substantial amounts of information. The Commission is not satisfied with the information policy and this was transmitted to the Americans," he said. A secret EC document submitted to the WTO and leaked earlier this year clearly states "there is no unique, absolute, scientific cut-off threshold available to decide whether a GM product is safe or not".

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 [14]. The test method will also have to be verified at the EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC) before it is accepted for certification purposes by the EC. But according to Dr. Brian John of GM-free Wales, "That could be a very protracted process, 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 around. 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 ëmiss' widespread GM contamination simply by adjusting your sampling methods." [15]

It is not clear that the JRC can be trusted, since its former CEO, "Dr." Barry McSweeney, attempted to suppress the publication of the official 2005 EC report on the so-called "co-existence" of GM crops with conventional and organic farming, which found that GM food has no benefits to consumers and that GM crops would cause up to 40% higher costs for EU farmers. [16]

Even if and the JRC approves a validation test as it may do this week, it begs the question of how much illegal and/or unlabelled GM rice and other GM crops has contaminated our food chain since 1998. Most US soya, maize, oilseed rape, cotton and rice are now contaminated. But since no one is able to look into the past, nobody will ever know.

Inside sources said yesterday that the Department of Agriculture will attempt to trace recent shipments of rice for animal feed to see if they are clean. We know of no response from the Department of Health and Children.

The scandal has been reported world wide since last week [17], with the notable exception of the Irish Times, Irish Independent, and the Irish Farmers Journal, which all have close ties to the GM industry [18].

Irish response

Michael O'Callaghan, who co-ordinates the GM-free Ireland Network [19] representing 124 farm and food groups North and South of the border [20], said "This latest contamination scandal shows how easily European and Irish food are being contaminated by imports of both illegal and legal GM food and animal feed from the USA and other countries in North and South America. The fact that such contamination may have occurred for years without being discovered should be the final nail in the coffin of the unworkable EC and Irish Government plans to allow the so-called ëco-existence' of GM crops with conventional and organic farming [21]. It makes a farce of the government's claim that one can keep GM and conventional foods separate from farm to fork. He also said Ireland should follow the lead of the EU's largest agricultural producer, Poland, and implement a blanket ban on GM seeds and crops with immediate effect.

This morning, the General Secretary of the Irish Cattle and Sheepfarmers Association (22), Eddie Punch, said "Ireland cannot afford to import any of Bayer's illegal GM rice or any other GM food that could contaminate the Irish food chain and then find its way into processed food that is later exported as Irish produce. The future of Ireland's farm and food industries depends on utilising the clean green image of this island to export to the discerning consumers of Europe who clearly demand safe GM-free food." He added, "If the world's biggest chemicals company is unable to keep its GM seeds separate from conventional varieties, how can ordinary farmers be expected to do so?"

Speaking on behalf of the 200 members of Euro-Toques Ireland / the European Community of Chefs [23], Evan Doyle (co-owner of the BrookLodge Hotel & Spa and the Strawberry Tree restaurant in Macreddin, Co. Wicklow), made the following statement today: "Our members are committed to a GM-free food policy, and can not afford to sell anything contaminated with a GMO, particularly if it is illegal. GM rice is illegal in the EU. I call on the FSAI to recall all food products containing or derived from US long-grain rice from Irish wholesalers and retailers, until such time as reliable tests prove beyond doubt they are not contaminated by any GMOs." He added "Our restaurant turns over §10m a year, but will lose its organic certification if our food supply becomes contaminated with any GM ingredients, legal or illegal. Keeping GM-free makes business sense!"

Michael O'Callaghan added "The ongoing saga elected representatives who collude with the biotech industry [24] to contaminate Irish agricultural seeds, crops and food is a clear violation of our Government's constitutional obligation to protect the health, property and food security of Irish citizens. I call on the Irish government, and on all farm, food and consumer groups to demand an immediate ban on all imports of US long grain rice, to support the recall of all US long-grain rice products from supermarket shelves, and to reject any future applications for experiments and commercial release of GM seeds and crops on the island of Ireland".

In June of this year, international participants at the Green Ireland Conference warned that our governments' collusion with the WTO and the agbiotech industry will cause massive economic losses to our food, farm and tourism sectors, and that Bord Bia's failure to address the issue has already tarnished our clean green image as Ireland ‚ the food island. [25]

Richard S. Lewis, a partner and environmental legal expert with the Cohen, Milstein firm, said "Our clients feel that Bayer should have taken stricter steps when growing this genetically modified rice to prevent it from contaminating the commercial rice market. Bayer's actions have resulted in an unprecedented price drop financially impacting all rice farmers." According to the USDA, rice production in the U.S. is valued at about $1.9 billion. The market price of U.S. rice has dropped approximately ten percent (including a 60 cent drop in US rice futures) since Bayer first announced the contamination.

Contact

Michael O'Callaghan, Coordinator, GM-free Ireland Network
tel + 353 (0)404 43 885
email: mail@gmfreeireland.org
www.gmfreeireland.org

Notes

1. BASF Plant Science GmbH gave up its plans for a controversial patented GMO potato experiment in Co. Meath in April this year, and may cancel it altogether. Bayer said it made the decision because of the conditions imposed in the provisional consent given by the Environmental Protection Agency on 8 May. These included obligations for the company to reduce the risk of cross-contamination of neighbouring farmers and wildlife, and to pay the costs of an independent monitoring of health and environmental impacts. BASF complained that such conditions had not been imposed for similar experiments in Sweden. The cancellation may also have been influenced by nationwide opposition from more than 100 farm and food industry groups, resistance by TDs from all the parties, two motions passed unanimously by Meath Co. Council, and the threat of further legal action on planning and constitutional grounds. Days later, BASF CEO Hans Kast (who also chairs the biotech lobby Europa-Bio), said that all the European countries which oppose GM food and crops should "get out of the EU"! For details see linkhttp://www.gmfreeireland.org/potato .

2. For effects of glufosinate ammonium see http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/impacts_glufosinate_ammon.pdf
#search=%22glufosinate%20ammonium%22.

3. Since 1996, the USDA has granted at least 48 permits authorising Bayer or companies it has acquired, such as Aventis and AgrEvo, to plant over 4,000 acres of experimental GM rice in the USA. This may also have been released in Puerto Rico. According to Dr. Brian John of GM-free Wales, "Since most of the development work on Bayer's GM rice appears to have been done in California, it is highly likely that Californian medium grain rice is now contaminated with LL601 and with various other abandoned GM lines. Nobody knows how extensive this contamination is, because there is no testing. Furthermore, since no reference materials or genetic characterisations have yet been provided by Bayer for LL601 and the other redundant varieties, nobody knows what to look for or how to do the tests."

4. Genetic instability of GM plants, see http://www.indsp.org and http://www.genewatch.uk.

5. In January of this year, an export customer of Riceland Foods (a farmer-owned cooperative which is the largest marketer of rice in the USA) discovered that the illegal GM rice had contaminated food supplies in Arkansas and Missouri. Riceland said that because GM rice is not grown commercially in the US, it first assumed that some other GM crop such as maize had been mixed with the rice during storage or transportation. In May, Riceland said the company collected rice samples from several grain storage sites and found positive results for the GM contamination. Riceland said it informed Bayer, which confirmed the findings but claimed the modified rice was present at levels equivalent to 6 of every 10,000 grains.

Bayer then waited over two months until 31 July before reporting to the US authorities that the illegal GMO rice has contaminated food supplies.

US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns waited for a further three weeks before announcing the contamination on 18 August. He claimed the GM rice poses no risk to health or the environment. US Agriculture Department officials later said the contamination was found in bins in Arkansas and Missouri that held rice from the 2005 crop, although the rice in those bins might have come from other states.

Days later, Riceland said that recent tests proved the contamination has been discovered in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. It is still unclear how the rice, which was last field-tested at experimental sites in the USA between 1998 and 2001, entered the 2005 crop. Riceland Vice President for Public Affairs Bill Reed said "We don't know where it is or isn't. We do know it's scattered and random throughout the South. But we don't know if it's limited to varieties. The USDA will determine that and we've told them they must find that out as quickly as possible and let everyone know. That's for them to discover." He said the USDA said, ëWe can't tell you how long it'll take.' It depends on how they go through the discovery process.' He also said "There was input from the Securities Exchange CommissionÖ because this was significant. They told us, ëYou're not to talk about this.' In fact, we weren't even able to tell our salesmen. This is impacting every segment of the rice industry."

6. Bayer applied to the USDA to deregulate the illegal GMO rice on 22 August 2006. The application may be downloaded at: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs/98_32901p.pdf.

According to a statement issued on 28 August by Richard Bell, the Arkansas Secretary of Agriculture "The USDA is in the process of deregulating it, which makes it eligible for commercialization. I guess the thinking is that will designate it safe for consumption. I thought that was odd. There are two other Liberty Link varieties that have been deregulated but not commercialized. And by ëcommercialized' we mean going into trade. That hasn't happened because the rice industry objected to it. The question I hear most is, ëWhen will this end?' The other problem is not knowing what variety (the Liberty Link trait) is in. I've told farmers that if they have storage space to try and keep varieties separated. But everyone knows that by next week, we'll be in harvest in a big way. And as we don't have enough storage space, through necessity, varieties will be mixed. Almost all the tests are showing up positive. I've been through this before. A decade ago, we had a dioxin situation in soybean meal. The testing bill was certainly expensive. The people who will gain the most will be the testing laboratories and attorneys. (Farmers should) keep varieties separated as long as (they) can. That's the best advice for farmers, right now. And I know that's not much. But I just don't know what else to say."

This week, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the U.S. Centre for Food Safety (http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org target=winshow) said "the USDA is out of control; its continuing failure to adequately regulate and monitor field testing of genetically engineered crops clearly puts the environment and public health at risk. The extent to which pollen or grains from these field trials have contaminated commercial rice or related weedy species such as red rice is unknown. USDA policies do not provide for the testing of fields adjacent to field test sites to detect possible contamination with the experimental genetically engineered crop" .

7. Prior to being the US Supreme Court Judge who put George W. Bush in office, Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's lawyer. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (Anne Veneman) was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Calgene Corporation. The Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle pharmaceuticals. The U.S. Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor. The two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the last election were Larry Combest (Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee) and Attorney General John Ashcroft. For more information see http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/30/fda_monsanto_dangerous_relations.htm.

8. Reuters, 28 August 2006: US rice farmers sue Bayer CropScience over GM rice. Reuters, 29 August 2006: Bayer faces more lawsuits over GMO rice, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=ousiv
&storyID=2006-08-29T184418Z_01_N29437472_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-FOOD-BAYER-RICE-DC.XML&from=business.

A copy of the first complaint is available upon request from James Pizzirusso at Cohen, Milstein on tel + 1 202 589-2257 or jpizzirusso@cmht.com .

9. On 22 August, EC spokeswoman Antonia Mochan said it was still unclear how EU customs officials will detect whether rice imports are contaminated or not, but that experts are working on detection methods with U.S. officials and representatives of Bayer. "We have to do what we can to make sure the rice doesn't come onto our market," she said.

On 23 August, a senior European Commission official said "The U.S. authorities were notified on July 31 ó we were notified on August 18th. We are not happy with this". The EC said it still has no idea about possible volumes of LL Rice 601 that may have entered Europe, nor the countries that may have received cargoes with the strain. It said a validation test for the illegal GMO rice "would be distributed in Europe in a few days". A week later, the test is still not available.

On 24 August, the European Commission adopted an emergency decision requiring all imports of long grain rice from the USA to be certified as free from the unauthorised GMO. Only consignments of US long grain rice that have been tested by an accredited laboratory using a validated testing method and accompanied by a certificate assuring the absence of LL Rice 601, can enter the EU. The measures entered into effect immediately, and are expected to be reviewed after 6 months.

The EC said the extent to which the US supply chain has been contaminated is still unknown, which is why the Commission though it was appropriate to proceed immediately with the adoption of emergency measures. These were approved unanimously by 22 of the 25 member states who were present at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Friday. The Commission said it will continue actively monitoring the situation and adapt the measures if necessary.

The EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Markos Kyprianou, said "We have strict legislation in place in the EU to ensure that any GM product put on the European market has undergone a thorough authorisation procedure based on scientific assessment. There is no flexibility for unauthorised GMOs - these cannot enter the EU food and feed chain under any circumstances. The measures we have taken today will ensure that unauthorised GM rice is not inadvertently imported. EU consumers can rely on the high level of protection that our GM rules afford them."

The reality, however, is that we have probably been eating the unauthorised GM rice for years. The EC's supposedly "high level of protection" from GM contamination relies on testing and information provided by Bayer, makes no commitment to its own assessment of the extent of the contamination problem, and also imposes no penalties and costs against Bayer.

10. An illegal shipment of 2,546 tonnes of genetically modified Bt10 maize was unloaded at Greenore, Co. Louth on 26 May 2005. The Bt10 maize, manufactured by Syngenta, had been mislabelled since 2001 as a legal variety called Bt11. Bt10 maize produces its own pesticide and is prohibited world-wide because it contains an antibiotic resistance gene with threatens the health of animals and humans. The illegal product was only intercepted because the EU forced the US authorities to carry out tests at the port of departure. The fact that so many tonnes arrived in a single shipment long after the EU required the USA to terminate the practice, raises the question of how many hundred thousand tonnes of mislabelled Bt10 GM feed may have been fraudulently sold to Irish cattle and sheep farmers - and consumed by Irish livestock and people - over the previous 4 years or more. Nobody knows how much Irish dairy, beef and lamb produce contaminated by Bt10 has been consumed, or exported under Ireland's clean green food island image between 2001 and 2005. In an attempt to cover-up the scandal, the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food issued a press release which referred to the illegal Bt10 shipment as a "sample", failing to disclose the quantity of 2,546 tonnes - enough to fill over 85 lorries, and contaminate over six million cattle and sheep. For details see http://www.gmfreeireland.org/scandal/index.php.

11. Commenting on the EC response, Greenpeace International spokesperson Jeremy Tager said "this is inadequate as rice is the world's most important staple food and is contained in many food products currently on EU shelves. It is time to move beyond case-by-case procedures as the GE industry has shown time and time again that it is unwilling or unable to prevent GE contamination." Greenpeace International calls on the EC to stop reacting to contamination 'accidents' and start preventing them instead. The EC should identify countries and products that are at high risk of contaminating our food supply with illegal or dangerous GE organisms and implement screening, preventative testing and, where there is no demonstrated capacity to prevent contamination, total bans.

12. No long-term health studies justify industry claims that GM food is safe. Scientific investigations of death and disease attributable to GM food in laboratory animals, livestock and the human population have led to accusations of criminal negligence and corruption of the US Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, the UK Food Standards Agency, and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) - which are infiltrated by agbiotech lobbyists and routinely accept biased and pseudo-scientific risk assessments submitted by the corporations they are supposed to regulate. For details see http://www.gmfreeireland.org/health.

13. FSAI CEO Dr. John O'Brien is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a biotech industry lobby group based in Washington, and of its European branch based in Paris. ILSI is funded by the biotech industry. Its objectives include promoting GM crops, GM food, and GM tobacco.

The ILSI has been widely criticised for posing as a Non Governmental Organisation in order to infiltrate and shape the food safety policies of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It positioned its experts and advice across the whole spectrum of these agencies' food and tobacco policy committees and international conferences. The ILSI was founded in Washington in 1978 by the Heinz Foundation, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, General Foods, Kraft (owned by Philip Morris) and Procter & Gamble. Until 1991 it was led by Alex Malaspina, vice-president of Coca-Cola. Dr Malaspina established ILSI as a non-governmental organisation "in official relations" with the WHO and secured it "specialised consultative status" with the FAO. Eileen Kennedy, global executive director of ILSI, said that the funding of its regional groups came exclusively from industry. According to The Guardian (9 January 2003), some of the strongest criticism of transnational corporate co-optation of international and governmental policy has been levelled against the ILSI for its efforts to get the WHO to downplay the links between sugar-rich junk food and childhood obesity and diabetes.

Entrusting a Director of the ILSI with Ireland's food safety is unacceptable. Until Dr. O'Brien is removed from his position as CEO of the FSAI, all the latter's past and future opinions on GM food safety must be regarded as suspect.

14. See http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2357926.

15. GM-free Cymru press statement by Dr. Brian John, 26 August 2006.

16. You can download the EC's Joint Research Centre's report on "Scenarios for co-existence of genetically modified, conventional and organic crops in European Agriculture" at http://www.gmfreeireland.org/downloads/gmcrops_coexistence.pdf.

17. For current media coverage through 31 August 2006, see http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php#rice. After 1 September 2006, see also http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/2006/aug/index.php.

18. The Irish TV and print media provide only very limited and often biased coverage of the GM controversy. There are obvious conflicts of interest.

The Chairman of the Irish times Trust (which owns the Irish Times) is Prof. David McConnell who not only set up the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin (which receives biotech industry funding), but is also Co-Chair of EAGLES - the European Action on Global Life Sciences lobby group). His astonishing public denial of the existence of any evidence of GM food health risks, if often reflected in his newspaper's lack of coverage and pro-GM bias on the subject.

Ireland's former Attorney General, Dermot Gleeson, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Independent Newspaper Group, is also Chairman of the Irish Institute for Bioethics whose report "Genetically Modified Crops and Food: Threat or Opportunity for Ireland?" (published on 28 November 2005) reads like a Monsanto press release.

The Irish Farmers Journal has utterly failed in its responsibility to inform Irish farmers about the agronomic, economic and legal risks of GM farming, and has supported the myth that the Irish Farmers Association has had until recently "no position" on GM farming. The Journal operates from the Irish Farmers Organisation (IFA) headquarters in Dublin. It claims to be "the unbiased voice for progress and development on Irish farms" and "the voice of Ireland's farming industry", with a stated aim "to be the best source of Irish agricultural and rural information" and "to provide the focus for open debate on agricultural development as the best source of information for the Irish agricultural industry and the families dependent on it." The IFA is a member of COPA-COGECA (Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations in the EU + General Confederation of Agricultural Co-operatives in the EU), the largest and most influential farming organisation in Europe. COPA-COGECA regularly lobbies the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions for EC legislation to approve GM seeds and crops and to prohibit the member states from establishing GMO-free zones. Donal Cashman (the former IFA President and Board member of the Agricultural Trust which owns the Irish Farmers Journal) is the current President of COGECA and a former Vice-President of COPA.

19. GM-free Ireland web site: http://www.gmfreeireland.org.

20. For organisational members of the GM free Ireland Network see http://www.gmfreeireland.org/network/members.php.

21. Re Irish government plans "to ensure the co-existence of GM crops with conventional and organic farming" see http://www.gmfreeireland.org/coexistence.

For data on GM contamination incidents in 39 countries, see http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org.

In June 2006, Greenpeace published Impossible co-existence: Seven years of GMOs have contaminated organic and conventional maize: an examination of the cases in Catalonia and Aragon. The report shows that the EC's strategy for "co-existence" is a recipe for widespread contamination. Download: http://www.gmfreeireland.org/coexistence/Greenpeace/impossible-coexistence.pdf.

22. ICSA web site: http://www.icsaireland.com.

23. Euro-Toques Ireland web site: http://www.eurotoquesirl.org.

24. In 1997 the Fianna Fáil agriculture spokesman Joe Walsh TD issued a FF position paper which clearly stated the agricultural, environmental and health risks of GM food and crops and also promised that FF would never allow them to be grown in Ireland. He then became Agriculture Minister.

But only months later, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern caved in to pressure from US biotech industry lobbyists. In his bestselling book Seeds of Deception: exposing corporate and government lies about the safety of genetically engineered food (ISBN 1-903998-41-7), author Jeffrey M. Smith quotes journalist Bill Lambrecht describing how Washington's biotech connections came into play during a carefully orchestrated reception for Bertie Ahern at the White House on St. Patrick's Day 1998:

"His vote was needed to carry the EU's acceptance of Monsanto's GM maize. When Ahern had lunch with National Security Advisor Council Director Sandy Berger, the topic that Berger chose to focus on was on the need to get that maize vote. Again, when Ahern met Senator Bond from Missouri and several members of Congress, the issue was GM maize. According to Toby Moffett, a former congressman turned Monsanto man, ëEverywhere he went, before people said Happy St. Patrick's Day, they asked him, What about that corn vote?' The amazed Moffett said, ëI'm fifty-four years old, and I've been in a lot of coalitions in my life, but this is one of the most breathtaking I've seen.' The next day, Ireland cast its vote in favour of Monsanto's GM maize, the first time Ireland acted in favour of a GMO release. When revelations of the events in Washington were made public by Lambrecht in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Genetic Concern charged in a press release, ëUS multinationals have more influence than the Irish electorate.'"

Following Bertie Ahern's St. Patrick's day visit to Washington, Fianna Fáil issued a new press release stating that "the area of biotechnology which holds the greatest potential for Ireland is in agriculture"! Ireland's EU voting record since then leaves no doubt about this Government's hardline pro-GM policy.

David Byrne used his political influence as EU Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner to lift the EU's de facto embargo on GM food and crops prior to leaving office in 2004, to the fury of the majority of EU member states. He also attempted to establish a 0.5% threshold for the labelling of 17 varieties of GM-contaminated seeds, whereas EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fishler and EU Environment Commissioner wanted 0.3%, and the European Parliament, NGOs, consumer groups, farmers organisations and trade unions have appealed to the Commission to set the seeds labelling contamination threshold at the reliable detection level of 0.1%.

T·naiste Mary Harney appointed "Dr." Barry McSweeney to the newly-created post of Ireland's first Chief Scientific Officer in July 2004. But in his previous position as Director General of the EU Joint Research Centre (www.jrc.cec.eu.int), he was accused by Greenpeace of trying to suppress the EU report on coexistence of GM and conventional crops which found that GM varieties will inevitably contaminate conventional and organic crops and cause higher production for EU farmers.

Minister of State Tim O'Malley TD at the Department of Health and Children with responsibility for Food Safety, claimed in 2004 that the scientific evidence of GM health risks does not exist!

Whilst President of the European Parliament in 2004, Pat Cox repeatedly denied the existence of any scientific evidence of GM risks to health and the environment.

25. Proceedings of the Green Ireland Conference held at Kilkenny Castle, June 2006: http://www.gmfreeireland.org/conference.

American GM rice contaminated our supplies for months

Western Mail, 29 August 2006

GRAIN from experimental field trials of GM rice in the United States has been contaminating European food supplies, including baby food, for months.

All shipments of rice from the United States was banned by the European Union last week after the US Government admitted that the banned long-grain rice, developed by Bayer CropScience, was widespread in exports to Europe.

US rice will only be allowed into Europe after tests to prove it is GM-free.

The contamination was discovered in January but Bayer only informed the US Government on July 31, and the Bush administration waited another 18 days before making the information public.

Britain has imported large quantities of long-grain rice from the US since the problem was first discovered and no one knows how much of this was contaminated, but the Food Standards Agency is planning tests on unsold rice.

A spokeswoman for FSA Wales said, "The agency will act to implement the necessary controls required of EC member states. "These involve requesting local authority enforcement authorities to step up border-control checks on US long-grain rice consignments for the required GMO-free certification, as well as carrying out sample testing on products already on the market."

It appears that American long-grain rice has been contaminated with the banned GM organism for years.

Bayer decided not to market the grain after field tests on US farms between 1998 and 2001. The reasons for the decision are not known.

In Arkansas, one of several areas of the US involved in the crisis, the state government believes that the problem originated when pollen spread from GM rice to conventional crops. Richard Bell, the Arkansas agriculture secretary, admitted that the contamination is "widespread" and predicted that it would show up again in this year's crop.

The campaign group GM Free Cymru yesterday called on supermarkets to remove all products containing long-grain rice from the southern United States off their shelves until they have proof that they are free from contamination. Spokesman Dr Brian John said the contamination was much more serious than the Bt10 incident which made the headlines last year.

"American long-grain rice is a primary food consumed in a virtually unprocessed form by millions of consumers across the EU," said Dr John."

It is also widely used in baby food as a cereal, recommended for use early in the weaning process."

Dr John said the contamination was "hushed up" by Bayer and by the American government and long-grain rice from the southern Unites States continued to be shipped to the EU at a rate of more than 20,000 tonnes a month.

"That adds up to 140,000 tonnes and it is absolutely certain that rice containing LL601 is already in the food supply chain," he said.

"In our book that amounts to criminal negligence by Bayer and the US administration." Wales Euro-MP Jill Evans described the contamination as "very serious" and said it undermined any confidence the EU had left in the US regulatory system.

"The fact that Bayer knew about it months before disclosing this means we can't rely on the information and tests that they give us," she said. Ms Evans said current EU restrictions were "inadequate".

"There must be an immediate ban on all long-grain rice imports from the USA and shops should be advised to withdraw stock that contains recent unprocessed US long-grain rice," she said. Ý

"But a longer-term solution is needed. We can't keep on reacting to these contamination 'accidents'.

"I am writing to the European Commission urging them to identify countries and products that have high risk of contaminating our food with GMOs and to implement strict screening and testing on these products before they can enter our food market."

28 August 2006

US rice farmers sue Bayer CropScience over GM rice

Reuters, 28 Aug 2006

LOS ANGELES, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California have sued Bayer CropScience, alleging its genetically modified rice has contaminated the crop, attorneys for the farmers said on Monday.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock, law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll said in a statement.

The farmers alleged that the unit of Germany's Bayer AG failed to prevent its genetically modified rice, which has not been approved for human consumption, from entering the food chain.

As a result, they said, Japan and the European Union have placed strict limits on U.S. rice imports and U.S. rice prices have dropped dramatically.

A Bayer representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

U.S. agriculture and food safety authorities learned on July 31 that Bayer's unapproved rice had been found in commercial bins in Arkansas and Missouri. While the United States is a small rice grower, it is one of the world's largest exporters, sending half of its crop to foreign buyers.

The genetically engineered long grain rice has a protein known as Liberty Link, which allows the crop to withstand applications of an herbicide used to kill weeds.

The European Commission said on Wednesday the EU would require U.S. long grain rice imports to be certified as free from the unauthorized strain. The commission said validated tests must be done by an accredited laboratory and be accompanied by a certificate.

Japan, the largest importer of U.S. rice, suspended imports of U.S. long-grain rice a week ago.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration have said there are no public health or environmental risks associated with the genetically engineered rice.

The United States is expected to produce a rice crop valued at $1.88 billion in 2006. U.S. rice growers are responsible for about 12 percent of world rice trade. Three-fourths of the crop is long grain, grown almost entirely in the lower Mississippi Valley. California, the No. 2 rice state, grows short grain rice. (Additional reporting by Christopher Doering in Washington)

Fall-out from GMO rice in U.S. supply continues

Delta Farm Express, 28 August 2006. By David Bennett.

When cool weather arrives and harvest season is done, Southern farmers will remember 2006 as exceedingly difficult. Mother Nature has played no cropping favorites - drought, oppressive heat and high energy costs have pummeled all. But after a USDA announcement on Aug. 18, rice farmers can surely claim the cruelest blow.

On that day, USDA head Mike Johanns announced that trace amounts of unapproved, genetically modified Liberty Link rice had been found in the U.S. rice supply. Despite FDA assurances that the contamination - equivalent to six kernels per 10,000 - was safe for consumption, the markets dipped quickly.

Farmers who had seen the rising price of rice as a salve for drained bank accounts and hard days in the field immediately began asking questions. And, although every facet of the rice industry has been hit with the unwelcome news, most questions were directed at Stuttgart, Ark.-based Riceland Foods.

Claiming 9,000 members, the Riceland co-op handles a third of the nation's rice crop. It was a Riceland customer who first alerted the company to a potential problem last January. According to Bill Reed, Riceland vice president of public affairs, the months between that initial inquiry and Johann's statement have often felt like "looking in a haystack and not even knowing you're looking for a needle."

Reed spoke at length with Delta Farm Press on Aug. 25. Among his comments:

On current developmentsÖ

"There are some positives - although this is a situation where you have to look hard to find any. But the market was up 2 cents today. That shows a little sta