News | October '07 | The end of the illegal LL rice story
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the conclusion of its investigation into last year's contamination of American long-grain rice by two illegal, genetically engineered strains. The offending rice types were LL601 and LL 604, both experimental, herbicide-tolerant varieties developed by Bayer CropScience and field-tested during 1999-2001, but never commercialised. (For details of the whole story see http://ecoforth.org.uk/gm/cgmoldwn.htm or www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/rice_contamination.htm)
The investigation has taken fourteen months. It has taken the combined efforts of the Investigative and Enforcement Services of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the USDA's Office of the Inspector General, the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, the Agricultural Marketing Service and the Economic Research Service. It has involved more than 8,500 staff hours, site visits to more than 45 locations in 11 states and Puerto Rico, and the testing of 396 samples from 57 rice varieties harvested between 2002 and 2006.
The only firm conclusions drawn were that LL601 only contaminated a single variety of commercial rice (Cheniere), LL604 only contaminated a single variety of commercial rice (CL131), and that all these varieties were grown during the same years in the same university research station under a Bayer CropScience contract. However, while LL601 was grown at the same time as Cheniere, LL 604 wasn't grown at the same time as CL131. This means that the LL601 contamination could have occurred by cross-pollination, but that of LL604 must have occurred due to some other error.
The key problems which hampered the search were that records showing essential data, such as the locations of GM field trials, the dates of planting and cleaning of equipment, had not been maintained and were not available. Information could be collected only by interviewing individuals and trying to piece together what probably happened.
Investigators concluded that the exact mechanism for introduction could not be determined in either instance, and therefore APHIS will not be pursuing enforcement against Bayer CropScience. Their last word seems to be “Based on our findings, we are considering a number of actions to strengthen our enforcement and investigation capabilities and to foster better quality management practices”. The 'actions' under consideration seem to include:
- establishing retention requirements for records
- greater isolation distances between seed breeding fields and GM varieties
- requiring that permit holders have testing procedures available to identify unauthorised GM varieties.
The USDA seems reluctant to address its failures and has admitted that future contamination incidents are likely to occur. It seems content to rely on a new Biotechnology Quality Management System, announced in September, which is a voluntary programme to encourage industry and universities to establish best management practices.
Bayer CropScience seems to be getting away with its claim that the contaminations were an Act of God. The hundreds of farmers who have suffered severe financial losses, will now have to pin their hopes on winning their class action law suits filed against the company. While the embarrassing presence of the offending GM strains was simply 'legalised' by the USDA within three months of the scandal being revealed, the farmers' lawsuits could take many years to come to an end, and may not achieve anything.
OUR COMMENT
By definition, it is not possible for any product of genetic engineering to end up anywhere by an 'Act of God': GMOs are intrinsically an act of man. The next illegal, trace, GM contamination may well involve a gene which generates a dangerous drug, or, involve an unstable Bt-gene product which proves highly toxic, and it may well end up inside YOU.
The lesson here is that gene contamination cannot be economically or sustainably controlled: the countries which have charged off down the GM route have only found it practical due to, what Friends of the Earth describe as, 'pathetically lax standards' of regulation, and university research establishments which, unbelievably, don't keep records. The USDA's voluntary-style regulation hasn't worked and can't work, except that is for the biotech industry.
The good side of this ending to the illegal LL rice story (if you can call shrugging your shoulders, and saying we just don't know an 'ending') is that it provides concrete evidence as to why the EU's cumbersome GMO regulations are necessary. We now have firm practical grounds to counter any US-driven demand that the World Trade Organisation step in to speed up our regulatory system by, for example, reducing our mandatory paper-trail.
Make sure that 'The End of the Illegal LL Rice Story' is the beginning of 'The Sustainable, GM-free Agriculture Story'. Support Friends of the Earth in its demand that the European Commission and UK Government introduce pro-active system for the monitoring of imports, and for identifying at-risk crops and countries, plus its demand that pressure is put on the US to ensure that they urgently improve their controls on GM including:
- keeping all countries to which it exports crops informed about ALL the commercial and experimental GM lines grown there
- making appropriate reference material available for testing as routine.
SOURCES
- www.usda.gov 5.10.07
- Friends of the Earth Press Release 8.10.07