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China says to allow grace period for GMO trade

August 22
Reuters

Shanghai -- China's top trade negotiator Long Yongtu said on Wednesday Beijing will likely allow a grace period for imports free of its restrictive rules for genetically modified food while authorities carefully fine-tune the policy.

The slow implementation of the new rules should not be a hindrance to trade, Long told reporters after a news conference in Beijing.

Asked whether there would be a transition period while Beijing maps out details of the rules, Long said: ``I would think so.''

``We have to take some time to lay out the detailed implementation rules. Until that, we are going to make sure this law will not become a hurdle to trade,'' said Long, who is also vice minister of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

Beijing announced rules on genetically modified organisms (GMO) on June 6, but fell short of issuing implementation details. That frustrated many traders at home and abroad, especially those involved in soybeans, which China actively imports.

The grains market has been hoping that China would set a transition period before implementing the GMO rules to allow imports free from their restrictions, traders said.

Chinese traders and analysts took some cheer from Long's comments, which they said cleared some of the fog that shrouded the market since early June.

``We consider this a good sign, we're happy to hear it and we look forward to further movement on the issue,'' said a Western diplomat in Beijing.

SITTING ON A VOLCANO

But other traders want more details.

``We still need the authorities to spell out a clear timeframe before we make any decision to book orders,'' said a trader with an international grains firm in Beijing.

``Without a timeframe, it's as risky as sitting on a volcano that will explode anytime,'' he said.

Long said implementation would be handled with care.

``We are very cautious, very careful to work out implementation rules to make sure that they are consistent with WTO rules,'' Long said. ``This is not an issue only for China. Many WTO members are very much concerned about this issue.''

China expects to enter the World Trade Organization by early 2002 at the latest, which will result in a flood of grains imports due to easing tariffs.

Some traders have said China could be using the new rules to control imports after WTO entry.

This week, leaders of the U.S. soybean industry will discuss the new rules with officials in China, the top importer of U.S. soybeans.

American Soybean Association president Bart Ruth and United Soybean Board chairman Doug Magnus plan to meet in Shanghai and Beijing with Chinese officials.

``Hopefully they would be able come out with the formal declaration this week. Then China can probably get their orders and soybeans soon before they run out,'' said the Western diplomat.

Beijing's new rules require government approval for all production, sale and import of GMO foods. They require safety certificates stating that the products are not harmful to humans, animals or the environment, and appropriate labels.

But a delay in implementation has led to very few inquiries and bookings of soybeans because traders fear once the rules are implemented, cargoes in shipment may have difficulty passing stricter quarantine provisions.

Imports were brisk before the rules were announced.

In the first six months of 2001, China's soybean imports rose 69.2 percent year-on-year to 5.97 million tons and nearly three quarters came from the United States, customs figures showed.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 68 percent of U.S. soybean crops are genetically modified.

Food fights can't feed the hungry

August 21
Boston Globe column by Hans Kornberg

BENEATH THE DEBATE in industrialized nations over biotechnology foods lies a tragic irony: Those who have the most may deny this promising technology to those who need it most.

That is the conclusion of a recent United Nations report warning that the world's poorest cannot afford for its richest to stall biotechnology on the basis of scientifically unfounded fears. Without biotechnology, the UN's Human Development 2001 report says, developing nations may be unable to feed their rapidly expanding populations.

So it is sad - and potentially dangerous - that, in the report's words, the debate in the West ''mostly ignores the concerns and needs of the developing world.''

The reason, the UN says, is perspective: ''Western consumers who do not face food shortages or nutritional deficiencies or work in the fields are more likely to focus on food safety and the potential loss of biodiversity.'' By contrast, ''farming communities in developing countries are more likely to focus on potentially higher yields and greater nutritional value and on the reduced need to spray pesticides that can damage the soil and sicken farmers.''

That does not detract from the sincerity of those in wealthy nations who have raised concerns about biotechnology. But those with the luxury to debate the issue must acknowledge our privileged vantage point: We get our food from grocery stores that are stocked full. The world's poor depend largely on subsistence farming.

Already 800 million are chronically malnourished. Now, as the world's population continues to expand, developing countries must feed more people on less land without ravaging the environment.

Food biotechnology - the techniques used to improve crops at the genetic level - offers scientifically proven ways to help a hungry world by enriching the nutritional content of staples, improving agricultural productivity, and protecting the environment.

example, scientists are developing a strain of ''golden rice'' fortified with with extra betacarotene, which could combat millions of cases of vitamin A deficiency, which can result in blindness and death. Researchers are also exploring more nutritious strains of sweet potatoes and cassava, which are the staple foods of many underdeveloped countries.

can also improve yields by developing crops that can protect themselves against pests and disease, which devastate harvests in the developing world. Other crops might someday be able to grow in droughts, extreme heat, and other difficult conditions.

Biotechnology can also lessen agriculture's impact on the environment. Crops that use soil nutrients and water more efficiently could help to conserve natural resources, and by growing more food on the same land, the need to cut down ecologically sensitive environments like rain forests for food production will be decreased.

Crops that protect themselves against pests and disease - like strains of corn, cotton and potatoes already in widespread use in the United States - also reduce the need to spray chemicals. And genetically modified strains of soybeans and cotton have transformed weed control in the United States, enabling more farmers to employ no-till practices that conserve topsoil and minimize runoff of sediment into rivers and streams.

Consumers in industrialized nations will reap these benefits too. But it is the world's poor who most need them - and, ironically, the world's wealthiest who have the most power to stall them.

In attempting to halt biotechnology, its opponents often cite concerns about its safety. They may find some comfort in the UN's call for a rigorous system of regulation and testing to ensure biotechnology foods are safe. Such a system already exists in the United States, where biotechnology foods have for years been required to meet the same strict standards for dietary and environmental safety as every other product.

That system - and reams upon reams of objective scientific research - have proven that biotechnology is safe and beneficial: There is no valid evidence that anyone's health has been permanently damaged through the consumption of genetically improved food. And for the world's poor, the United Nations says this technology is indispensable.

To be sure, that should not preclude industrialized nations from conducting a robust, open and ongoing discussion of biotechnology. That is the privilege of living in a free society. But we should not forget it is also the luxury of living in a wealthy one.

Hans Kornberg is a professor of biology at Boston University and former chair of the United Kingdom's Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification.

Feed us the facts

This week, Ottawa serves up its report on GM food. It may not satisfy public hunger for clear labels, says ethics writer Michael Valpy

August 21
Toronto Globe and Mail

Until a couple of years ago, former Monsanto Co. chairman Robert Shapiro's boasts about his company knew no bridle. The spread of Monsanto's genetically modified food-crop seeds, he would claim, was the most successful launch of any agricultural technology in history, including the plow. Eventually ordinary people around the world -- and some of their governments -- took notice of what Monsanto was doing and began to realize that Mr. Shapiro's company was getting creative with the staff of life itself. Which led Dan Glickman, U.S. agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, to observe that Mr. Shapiro should stifle his entrepreneurial boasting, "because every time he opens his mouth, U.S. agriculture loses millions more bushels of agriculture exports."

Too late. Around the world, consumers are increasingly concerned about the spread of GM foods, and want to know more about what they're eating. This is the backdrop for the publication (rescheduled for this Thursday) of a document that will tackle the controversial issue of GM foods in Canada -- how they're produced, regulated, labeled (or not), and how they will find their way into your kitchen and mine. Chaired by Dr. Arnold Naimark, former president of the University of Manitoba, the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee has titled its report to the federal government, "Improving the Regulation of Genetically Modified Foods and Other Novel Foods in Canada."

To paraphrase Charles Laughton in the wonderful 1954 film, Hobson's Choice, "Don't ever play games with food." Industry, the Canadian government and (some) scientists may enthusiastically laud the direction of Monsanto and other GM food players, but the great chunk of the public -- in direct proportion to the amount of thought it gives to the subject -- is already indicating it does not. This a subject where there are virtually no compromise positions and where seldom has a Canadian government document been awaited with such jaundiced expectations.

Major environmental agencies, such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, have boycotted the committee's consultative hearings. The committee has been accused of being a tool of government, not an independent adviser. Its membership has been called biased in favour of industry, and the premise of its existence has been questioned by civil society organizations, which want a parliamentary committee to hear submissions and advise the government.

The federal government created the CBA committee in 1999 to make policy recommendations on biotechnology to seven federal departments. The committee has used a secretariat from Industry Canada -- which strongly promotes the biotechnology industry -- and has drawn its members from industry, academia and civil society groups.

This committee will be making recommendations on who within government should make the regulatory decisions, how regulators should be publicly accountable and what sanitized distance should be maintained between public-servant regulators and public-servant promoters of the biotechnology industry.

They will be making recommendations on "socio-ethical and environmental concerns," on issues relating to consumer choice and consumer information. This latter item sounds like code language for labeling -- a hot-button issue, because while consumer groups overwhelmingly want mandatory labeling of GM ingredients in their food, both government and industry favor "voluntary" labeling, and that only when the GM content is 5 per cent or greater for each ingredient.

When I spoke with Dr. Naimark yesterday, he told me that the forthcoming report will not go over the same ground as an independent scientific panel commissioned by Ottawa, which published its findings earlier this year. "But there will be points of intersection." In fact, the federal government strongly dislikes the scientific panel report. No wonder: It labeled Ottawa's food regulatory regime unacceptably weak and plagued by conflicts of interest, ambiguous testing and a lack of transparency.

Major environmental groups, which in the main approved the scientific panel's report, have largely boycotted Dr. Naimark's committee. He says his group was "disappointed but not hamstrung" by their refusal to participate. "What we missed was the dialogue," he said, because environmental organizations and the industry groups might have narrowed their differences.

Not very likely.

Michelle Swenarchuk, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, is one of Canada's leading experts on biotechnology regulation, and a member of federal delegations to international conferences. She points out that Ottawa does not independently test GM food; it merely accepts company data. It does not embrace the precautionary principle, embedded in the European Union constitution, to make sure consumer goods such as foods can "do no harm" on the basis of safety- and science-based analysis. (Dr. Naimark said his report will address the precautionary principle.)

Ms. Swenarchuk says Canadians don't know nearly enough about the safety of GM foods, yet the government continues to assume that GM food and non-GM food are substantially the same, buying into the industry mantra that there is no difference between a new product developed through GM and one developed through other methods.

She cites the growing number of countries that are banning GM foods or demanding separate production and distribution -- a trend that presents increasing problems for Canadian exporters. She points out that Canada lost its European market for canola because of genetic modification to the bulk of the crop. "It was our own fault," says Ms. Swenarchuk.

She also points to what she calls the extraordinary coalition of 220 organizations -- including wheat growers, the Canadian Wheat Board, environmental groups, the Council of Canadians -- that is asking Ottawa to prohibit GM wheat in Canada.

And Ms. Swenarchuk recounts the incident last year when a genetically modified corn seed (StarLink, approved only as animal feed) contaminated millions of tons of corn, wound up in the global, human food chain in taco shells and other products, and ignited angry alarm around the world.

She says the 5-per-cent threshold of GM contamination that Ottawa wants to permit in ingredients before they must be mentioned in labeling is absurd. "Forget it," she says. "The world isn't going to buy crops marketed on that basis."

And she says that if government regulators don't address Canadians' -- and other peoples' -- concerns about GM food, the market will. "There's a constant increase in sales of organic foods," she says. "The government regulators have washed their hands? So the battleground is the marketplace."

On Thursday, the battle may focus on the CBAC report.

Truth in labeling

August 21
Toronto Star editorial

A committee heavy with the agri-corp end of the food business has issued draft standards on labeling food containing ``genetically modified organisms.``

The drafters invited public comment. But they released their draft on a summer Friday and it isn`t available on a Web site — both signs that comment`s the last thing they want.

But they needn`t wait for people to write for copies. They should withdraw the draft right now and redo it.

What they`ve produced is so weak that it only meets the needs of those pushing genetically modified corn, soybeans and canola, not the needs of people who`d like to know when they`re eating it. As their proposal stands, as much as 5 per cent of a food product could be altered — but producers could still label the food as being non-genetically modified.

In Europe, the limit is 1 per cent. Australia`s the same — though the prime minister tried to raise it before state health ministers blocked him.

These opposite areas of the world are both consumers and competitors for Canada`s agricultural industry. Why would they buy Canadian products that fall so far short of their own standards? Why wouldn`t they use their stronger standards to grab Canada`s markets in such places as Japan and China or the U.S.?

But for Canadians, this is about the right to know what we`re eating. The producers of altered foods claim they can`t meet tougher standards because natural and genetically modified foods get all mixed up in the handling.

They created the problem. It`s theirs to solve. If they can`t, it`s another reason for honest food labels, not an excuse for labels that hide the contents.

Panel advises giving OK to animal feed containing 1 percent GMOs

August 21
Kyodo News

Tokyo -- An advisory panel to the farm ministry issued a report Tuesday advising the government to allow the sale of animal feed containing up to 1% of unapproved genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

However, any genetically modified food variety imported from abroad should already have been approved by respective foreign authorities using the same safety testing standards as in Japan, the report said.

Currently, about 90% of the animal feed available in Japan is imported. If the panel`s recommendation were to be adopted, it would help expand the distribution of imported animal feeds, industry officials said.

If it is approved by the Agricultural Materials Council, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry will revise the related regulations so that the recommendation can be put into practice by early next year, ministry officials said.

Of the genetically modified varieties of organisms approved for animal feeds, only the one known as StarLink, a genetically modified corn, has not been approved in Japan.

Corn growers welcome Japanese biotech tolerances

August 21
AgWeb.com

"Although this is just the first step in a long process and applies to feed, not food., corn growers are encouraged that this action sets the stage for addressing the problems created by the unintentional commingling of StarLink in U.S. corn," said Rick Tolman, NCGA executive vice president and CEO.

One of Tolman’s first NCGA tasks was to visit Japan with U.S. Grains Council President Ken Hobbie to address the issue directly with Japanese customers.

In Japan’s draft proposal is expected to be open for comments from the public and from World Trade Organization member countries. Then the proposal will be submitted to the full MAFF Feed Committee for approval. The unapproved biotech hybrids must have approval in at least one of the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"If all goes smoothly, we estimate that the new law would take effect in early 2002," said Hobbie.

Tolman and Hobbie noted this positive development indicates that MAFF understands what an impossible task it is to guarantee a zero tolerance. Furthermore, it offers an option for corn that tests positive for StarLink to be used for feed in Japan.

Greenpeace in doll demo over GM baby food claim

August 21
Ananova (UK)

Greenpeace activists have blocked the HQ of a Swiss-based food manufacturer with hundreds of baby puppets.

Greenpeace says it found between 34 and 66% of soya in Gerber/Novartis baby food products sold in the Philippines was genetically modified.

The company says its baby food is GM free and that it will investigate the claims.

The baby puppets blocked the entrance to the company's HQ in Basel.

The puppets held signs saying, 'Novartis/Gerber, keep your promise!' and 'Novartis/Gerber, stop genetically modified Baby food!'.

"We demand an immediate stop to Novartis' double standards policy," Bruno Heinzer of Greenpeace Switzerland said in front of the Novartis building.

A Novartis spokesman told Ananova: "Our policy is that we don't actively source GM products for this food."

He added the company will investigate, saying: "We will have to check and verify to see if these claims are correct."

He also said: "We must also stress this is not a safety issue. We stand firmly behind the safety of the product."

Greenpeace say they tested three baby food products at the Hong Kong laboratory, DNA Chips.

GM food labeling should be mandatory

August 20
Toronto Star column by Peter McKenna

In early June, serious questions were being raised about whether beer produced in Canada contained genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Ten days later, Loblaws asked organic food suppliers to remove (or cover up with a felt marker) any GMO-free labels on their products - or face the prospect of reduced shelf space. By the end of July, news broke that Ottawa refused, citing privacy considerations and fears about possible sabotage, to disclose the exact locations of experimental field trials of genetically modified wheat in several provinces, including Ontario.

About 70 per cent of processed foods in Canada contain genetically modified (GM) material via such items as cornstarch, canola oil and corn syrup. Many products contain soybeans that are genetically engineered. Health Canada has approved some 48 GM products, such as corn, squash, flax and sugar beets.

GMO technology provides for the ability to add, subtract, alter or exchange an individual gene or group of genes. For example, scientists have transplanted fish genes into tomatoes to give them a longer shelf life and to make them less susceptible to frost.

The biotech sector in Canada is a billion dollar industry - largely dominated by foreign multinationals like Monsanto, Dupont and Novartis/Syngenta. Not only is Canada a leading player in the field, but it also stands to benefit hugely from an expanding global marketplace for this technology.

GMOs have become a veritable lightning rod for farmers, scientists, environmental activists and the general public. In some quarters, GMOs are regarded as a three-letter word for "dangerous." Some critics use the term "Frankenstein Foods." GMO skeptics are also deeply concerned about these products and identify a host of troublesome areas. Setting to one side the whole moral side of the debate (i.e. engineering other life forms), chief among these is food safety and human health risks - especially since no one can say with absolute certainty that GM foods are not harmful to human life. One scientific study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, confirmed that when laboratory rats consumed genetically modified potatoes, the growth of their internal organs was stunted and their immune systems were weakened considerably.

Concerns have also been raised about the impact of GMOs on allergy sufferers. For instance, people allergic to shellfish could have an adverse reaction to strawberries that contain transplanted shrimp genes used to enhance their red color in the fruit.

Farmers, too, are worried about possible cross-pollination to regular and organic crops and becoming dependent upon specific chemicals - for pesticide and herbicide use - that are only supplied by the major multinational seed companies like Monsanto. They also complain that they have to pay Monsanto a per-acre fee for planting herbicide-resistant canola seeds.

At the moment, there is no legal imperative for food producers in Canada to identify whether their commercial products are free of GMOs. Indeed, the federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has no such enforcement mandate; it does not even regulate the quantities of GM ingredients in food products.

What the Canadian General Standards Board - a committee of consumer groups, farmers, industry representatives and government officials set up to examine GM-labeling - has just released is a set of draft food labeling standards. According to the proposed guidelines, food products containing up to 5 per cent genetically modified ingredients (as opposed to 1 per cent in Europe and mandatory labeling) can voluntarily carry GMO-free labels.

But in a 1999 Environics survey, some 80 per cent of Canadians supported the inclusion of mandatory GM labeling on grocery store products. In fact, Liberal MP Charles Caccia has introduced a private member's bill calling for mandatory labeling.

Leading Biotech companies are cognizant of the growing public uneasiness about GM foods. Indeed, the Léger Marketing poll shows that almost 50 per cent of respondents believe that GMOs are very or somewhat dangerous to human health.

It's obvious that a major public relations offensive by the industry is going to unfold over the next few years. On its Web page, the Council for Biotechnology Information has no qualms about claiming that biotechnology is "one of the most revolutionary and beneficial scientific advances of the last generation."

Both sides, then, will continue to wage a propaganda campaign. But it is important that governments at all levels strive to take some ownership of this controversial field, as well.

Accordingly, there needs to be a credible regulatory role for government, genuine mechanisms for informed public input and a guarantee that effective and practical safeguards will be put in place. Ottawa could start by directing the CFIA to be more open - informing provincial governments where test trials of GM crops are taking place, clarifying legal liability issues and notifying local farming interests. It may even need to broaden its mandate to incorporate a role in certifying whether Canadian farm exports are GM free. In the final analysis, corporate or private interests cannot be allowed to trump the public's overall health and food safety interests.

Peter McKenna is a political scientist and an author based in Halifax.