Another problem with GMO corn!
nytimes.com
Europe Leaves Modified Corn Inquiry to U.S.
By PAUL MELLER
RUSSELS, April 5 - Despite public abhorrence in Europe of all things genetically modified, European officials say they will let the United States take the lead in untangling how unapproved corn entered Europe over the last four years.
Syngenta, the Swiss biotechnology company that produced the corn, said late in March that it had inadvertently mixed up two types of its genetically modified corn.
One type, known as Bt-11, has been legal for years in both the United States and Europe. But a similar strain, Bt-10, has never been tested or approved. The main difference between the two strains is that the unapproved one contains a gene that confers resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin. Environmentalists fear that introducing it into the food chain could increase resistance to antibiotics.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said Friday that it thought about 1,000 metric tons (1,102 tons) of an unauthorized strain of corn entered union countries in the forms of animal feed, corn flour and corn oil. Syngenta discovered its mistake in December, but informed the Europeans only last month, after a report in the journal Nature.
A spokesman for the European commissioner for health and consumer affairs, Philip Tod, said on Monday: "The commission has written a letter of protest to Syngenta, also asking for their cooperation in tracking down the Bt-10 corn in Europe, but beyond that we are not planning any other measures. It's a matter for the U.S. authorities."
Syngenta, based in Basel, Switzerland, said farmers produced 165,000 tons of the unapproved Bt-10 strain of corn on 37,000 acres in the United States from 2001 through the end of last year, thinking that they were producing Bt-11, its approved cousin. Both strains have a protein that is toxic to the European corn borer.
In mid-December, the company discovered the error while conducting tests, a spokeswoman, Sarah Hull, said, adding, "We immediately notified the authorities."
The United States Department of Agriculture consulted with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to see whether a recall was warranted. The agencies decided against it, seeing no threat to humans, animals or plants.
In Europe, officials were trying to figure out where the corn might have gone, Mr. Tod said, adding: "We can't say whether or not the imports of this corn have stopped or not. Because this Bt-10 corn was labeled as the legal Bt-11 strain, we have no idea where it arrived in the union or where it ended up."
The European commissioner for health and consumer affairs, Markos Kyprianou, in language considered unusually frank for European diplomacy, said, "We deplore the unauthorized imports of this corn."
The Agriculture Department denied that it deliberately kept authorities in other parts of the world in the dark. "There was no cover-up," a spokesman, Jim Rogers, said, adding it was normal not to release information while an investigation continued. Mr. Rogers said those inquiries would be concluded in coming weeks.
The European Commission has asked Syngenta to disclose the corn's molecular structure so scientists in Europe can help isolate it.
The Agriculture Department can fine a company as much as $500,000 for selling unauthorized crops, Mr. Rogers said, even if the company was not aware that it was selling an unauthorized product.
Europeans tend to be more suspicious of genetically modified food than Americans are. National governments refused to approve any of the genetically modified products, leaving the final decision to the commission, because they fear a backlash at the ballot box, said Adrian Bebb, a campaigner against genetically altered products for the advocacy group Friends of the Earth.
"This episode involving Syngenta's corn will make people even more suspicious," Mr. Bebb said. "It shows a complete breakdown in the monitoring system." He urged American authorities to take action against Syngenta and European lawmakers to review the procedures for allowing imports into member countries.
Mr. Rogers, taking a different view, declared, "This situation shows that the system does work in the way the regulations say it should work: the company reported this to us."
He added that he believed Syngenta informed American authorities as soon as it could, "but they are getting the benefit of the doubt on that." |
