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Journalism of Courage
The disclosure last month that American long-grain rice has become widely contaminated with traces of an experimental, gene-altered rice has provoked an economic crisis for farmers and reignited a long-smoldering debate over the adequacy of oversight of biotech food.
Already, Japan has banned US long-grain imports, noting, as have other countries, that the genetically altered variety never passed regulatory muster. Stores in Germany, Switzerland and France have pulled American rice off their shelves. And at least one ship last week remained quarantined in Rotterdam, awaiting word of whether its contents would be diverted or destroyed.
Scientists are just now figuring out how LLRICE601 made its way into the commercial rice supply. The company that developed it, Bayer CropScience of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, says it abandoned the project in 2001.
The unapproved rice poses no threat to human or animal health, federal officials have assured the public. And the level of contamination is minuscule, on the order of just six genetically engineered grains in every 10,000.
But the growing economic fallout from LL6018217;s unwanted and illegal reappearance8212;including a handful of lawsuits against Bayer8212;is a reminder that when it comes to food, public perception is as important as scientific assurances.
8220;We8217;ve been warning for years that something like this could happen,8217;8217; Yielding said, citing a December 2005 report from the Agriculture Department8217;s inspector general that lambasted the government for not keeping a closer eye on companies developing new crops. 8220;This is one of those deals where you hate to be right.8217;8217; Genetically engineered crops are common in the US, where 60 to 90 percent of the corn, soybean and cotton plants are enhanced with genes from bacteria and other organisms. Most of the added genes allow the plants to make their own insecticides or, as in LLRICE601, confer resistance to commonly used weedkillers.
But motivated by scientific, cultural and economic concerns, most countries around the world are finicky about biotech crops and allow relatively few in.
Although US farmers say they favour, in theory, further development of the crops, many have called for delays in field testing or marketing until other countries agree to accept them. With few mechanisms in place to segregate engineered from conventional varieties, and wide availability of tests able to detect minute quantities of foreign DNA, they say it is not worth the risk that shipments will become contaminated and rejected.
8220;Once it8217;s in the pipeline, it8217;s very hard to get it out,8217;8217; said Jeffrey Barach, vice-president at the Food Products Association, a D.C. trade group.
Analyses in the past two weeks of samples of other rice varieties that were grown over the years at the same research station found that at least one8212;a long-grain rice known as Cheniere8212;was contaminated with LL601 at least as far back as 2003. Records indicate that the affected plot of Cheniere rice, which was used to grow 8220;foundation stock8217;8217; from which much larger amounts were produced over the next few years, was located at least 160 ft from the LL601 plot, farther apart than what USDA required, said LSU spokeswoman Frankie Gould.
Exactly how and when the crossover of the genetically altered rice occurred remains uncertain. It could be, experts said, that some grains of LL601 got mixed inadvertently with grains of Cheniere, so that future plantings of Cheniere were really plantings of both. That could have gone unnoticed for years until someone tested for the errant gene8212;which is exactly how Riceland Foods Inc of Arkansas, happened upon the problem this year.
Or it may be that LL601 plants fertilised some Cheniere plants, creating a gene-enhanced Cheniere. Rice pollen does not usually go far afield, but it can.
Tests on more than a dozen other LSU varieties have come up negative for the LL601 gene, as have tests from Texas and Arkansas plots; results from Mississippi are pending. But because many varieties of rice are mixed in huge bins after harvest, it could be difficult to rid the US rice crop of the illegal variety.
8220;The damage has been done and it is still being done,8217;8217; said Adam J. Levitt, a partner in the Chicago office of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman 038; Herz LLC, who led a class action lawsuit that won 110 million for farmers after gene-altered and unapproved StarLink corn appeared in food in 2000. 8220;They8217;ve really in a very substantial way poisoned the well.8217;8217;
8212;The Washington Post / Rick Weiss
