MB Civic

[N.B. This comes fast on the heels of the article about the GE grass strain found in the wild. Apparently, the claimed ability of various industries to control the spread of GE organisms is moot. And why, when anything like this happens, do they always begin by saying “poses no threat to human health or the environment?” How could they possibly know that immediately?]

By ANDREW POLLACK

Small amounts of an unapproved type of genetically engineered rice have been found in samples of supplies destined for human consumption, a development that could potentially disrupt rice exports, federal officials said yesterday.

The rice poses no threat to human health or the environment, the officials said, and food found to contain the rice will not have to be recalled or destroyed.

Still, the discovery could mean that additional testing will be required of rice being bought by food companies or being shipped to other countries, some of which could reject shipments containing unapproved genetically modified crops.

About half the $1.9 billion American rice crop is exported. The concern of a disruption was such that the secretary of agriculture, Mike Johanns, announced the discovery yesterday and said that he had contacted his counterparts in other countries.

“The best way to deal with trade issues is to deal very, very directly with your trading partners, and we are doing that,” Mr. Johanns said. “There is not an environmental risk; there’s not a food safety risk.”

Robert E. Brackett, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration, said the agency knew of no safety issues with the rice.

The rice, developed by Bayer CropScience, a unit of Bayer, contains a bacterial gene that causes the crop to produce a protein that makes it resistant to the herbicide Liberty, also known as glufosinate.

While Bayer did not seek approval for this particular line of genetically engineered rice, two other similar lines of rice were approved several years ago by the Agriculture Department and the F.D.A. They have never been commercialized, however, mainly, many people say, because of opposition from rice exporters.

There are other crops, like canola and cotton, containing the same genetically engineered protein that have been approved in the United States and in other countries, including Japan and Europe, Bayer said in a statement, in which it said it was cooperating with federal authorities.

Agriculture Department officials said “trace amounts” of the unauthorized rice were detected by Bayer in long-grain rice from the 2005 harvest in Arkansas and Missouri.

Bayer reported this to the government on July 31. Since then, Mr. Johanns said, the government has been investigating and helping to validate tests that food processors and traders might use to detect the presence of the altered rice. He said the government would investigate further and would consider approving the rice.

Federal officials and Bayer would not say more about how much of the rice had been found and how widely it had spread. It was also not clear how the rice, which was grown in field tests from 1998 to 2001, got into the 2005 rice crop. It is possible that some rice was mixed in with seed used by Bayer in its breeding program or shipped to farmers.

The biotechnology industry has argued that it is virtually impossible to prevent trace amounts of “adventitious presence” of genetically modified crops or seeds where they are not supposed to be. Pollen flows from one field to another, and seeds can become intermixed in processing. A genetically modified seed looks no different from a conventional seed.

Last year, Syngenta said that a variety of genetically engineered corn that had not been approved — but which was similar to an approved variety — had mistakenly been distributed and planted for four years.

Bayer CropScience is the company that developed StarLink corn, involved in the most disruptive incident. The corn, approved only for animal feed, was found in the human food supply, prompting food recalls and disrupting exports. At that time the company was called Aventis CropScience but was later acquired by Bayer.

Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group in Washington, said the latest incident was “another example of how this biotechnology industry continues to act irresponsibly.”