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Tests to block blight of GE seed imports

December 20
New Zealand Herald

Border checks will be in place by March to test for genetically engineered material in imported seed shipments.

Until now there has been no compulsory testing of imported seeds for GE contamination.

The New Zealand move comes at a time when there are no international standards for quality assurance or border tests.

New Zealand officials have just finished dealing with a shipment of imported sweetcorn seed that was thought to contain GE material.

Initial testing suggested there might be minute traces of GE contamination, but a more detailed evaluation could not detect any such material, said the Minister for the Environment Marian Hobbs.

"Our best advice is that it is not possible to establish a testing regime which would provide absolute certainty that a batch of seed is GE-free."

She said achieving absolute certainty would require every seed to be tested and the only way to eliminate the risk would be to ban all seed imports from countries growing GE crops.

She said the Government planned to allow a low level of accidental contamination, such as 0.5 per cent in shipments of maize and sweetcorn seed, using a test sampling system.

These border checks will affect New Zealand's cropping farmers, who import 186 tons of corn seed each year. About 161 tons of this comes from the United States, where some farmers and grain handling companies have been found to have been mixing conventional and GE corn crops.

New Zealand imports maize, sweetcorn, tomato, squash, canola and a small amount of soybean seed from countries that grow both GE and conventional seed.

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said the contamination scare came after a company with export orders for GE-free corn tested its imported seed.

She said the order was an indication of a growing market for food crop seeds from countries that did not grow GE crops.

But Ms Hobbs said an outright ban on seed imports would cost New Zealand farmers and horticulturists an estimated $100 million a year.

It would also affect the extensive trade New Zealand had in "bulking up" newly developed cultivars for Northern Hemisphere companies wanting to get two crops off the same seed line in one year.

This business, largely based in Canterbury, is estimated to be worth $30 million a year.

Guidelines for New Zealand's sampling and testing procedures are being developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Environmental Risk Management Authority.

"We recognize this is a conservative approach and we will be looking to the Royal Commission [on Genetic Modification] for advice in its findings on how such issues should be treated in the future," said Ms Hobbs.

The interim standards are to be established by March, which is when orders for the next growing season are expected.

Ms Hobbs said the standards could be reviewed if any changes were needed after the royal commission reported in June.

Government to promote biotech in farm, food sectors

December 19
Times of India

NEW DELHI - The government will soon take several steps to popularize the use of biotechnology in the agriculture and food processing sectors. It will also establish ``more functional biotechnology parks'' to trigger a revolution in biotech industries, Union HRD and science minister Murli Manohar Joshi said on Monday.

Joshi, while inaugurating a three-day national conference on ``Emerging trends in biopharmaceuticals, proteins and the role of chromatography'', stressed the urgent need to promote the concept of biotechnology to meet international standards of food safety and industrial production.

The biotech industry's key objective should be to develop widely-applicable, easily and adequately scaled up, reproducible and cost-effective processes and products, especially in agriculture, biopesticides, fertilizers and health care and industrial enzymes, he said.

The government will also strengthen the existing R&D facilities and open training centers and laboratories to help in implementation and adoption of biotechnology products, especially by the small-scale sector and agro-rural industry, he said.

The minister said since the demand for food processed with the help of biotechnology was on the increase globally, the increased use of biotech by various industries would lead to greater quality production and exports.

Exhorting the private sector to play a greater role in this field, Joshi said Better cooperation with the public sector can end unnecessary problems in biotechnology-based industries in the country.

StarLink find fuels fresh U.S. uncertainty

December 19
Reuters

Chicago - The discovery of unapproved gene-altered StarLink corn in Japan and South Korea, top buyers of American corn, has triggered fresh uncertainty in U.S. corn exports, industry sources said on Tuesday.

The detection comes at a time when imports of U.S. corn by the two nations were expected to return to normal pace after a sharp decline in recent months due to concerns over StarLink.

StarLink corn, originally developed to be resistant to the European corn borer insect pest, is not approved for food use in the United State because of concerns it might trigger allergic reactions. But it is allowed as animal feed.

Japan, the top market for U.S. corn, does not allow StarLink corn for use in either food or feed, while South Korea permits the genetically-modified corn only for feed purposes.

The National Corn Growers Association on Tuesday did not rule out the possibility of its officials making trips to the two Asian countries to calm nerves.

``It shouldn't have happened,'' NCGA spokesman Stewart Reeve said. ``It's a major concern ... and as any good salesman does, we are willing to make those customer visits. A possibility of a trip (to Japan and South Korea) certainly exists.''

Analyst Shawn McCambridge of Prudential Securities said under Japan's zero tolerance policy on StarLink corn, even trace amounts of the corn would disqualify shipments. "In my view, the U.S. is doing about everything humanly possible, to do anything more will be extremely difficult at this point.

"If we had something along the lines of 2 to 4 percent tolerance, it would definitely be much easier to accomplish.

``The discovery will shake the confidence of the trade. The trade yesterday found that maybe we had most of the problems behind us. The ink's barely dry on the agreement and all of a sudden we are having problems again,'' he added.

On Monday, Japan and the United States reached agreement on StarLink testing procedures, raising optimism among traders that Japan's imports of U.S. corn would return to normal.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday the Health Ministry found StarLink corn in a cargo of U.S. corn for food use. Kyodo said the sample containing StarLink was among five that had tested negative in the United States but were sent to Japan for a second check under a bilateral agreement.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration said it had detected StarLink corn in a shipment from the United States and that the 2,760 tons would be used for industrial or feed purposes. It said the suppliers were Cargill Inc. and Agrex Inc.

A spokesman for privately-held agricultural powerhouse Cargill Inc. said the company was checking to verify the ``facts of the case'' in South Korea. He declined further comment.

StarLink corn, developed by European pharmaceutical giant Aventis SA , was first detected in U.S. food products in September. That lead to a series of food recalls.

Aventis CropScience, the U.S. unit of Aventis, has since been buying StarLink corn at a premium to ensure the corn is kept out of the food chain. Grain companies have been testing corn arriving at their facilities and heading for export markets for traces of StarLink.

A spokeswoman for Aventis CropScience said: ``We are working with exporters and grain handlers on a case-by-case basis to cover incremental costs associated with moving StarLink corn to correct uses.'' She declined to elaborate.

A spokesman for agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co said the company was not the supplier of the StarLink-tainted corn to Japan. He also said it was too early to say if the detection would affect U.S. corn exports.

``I still think that at the end of the day, we got to find ways to work together to assure them that they are getting the kind of products they want,'' spokesman Larry Cunningham said.

Exporters said the latest discovery of StarLink corn is expected to dent corn exports to Japan, which imports 4 million tons of corn for food and another 12 million tons for animal feed a year.

They said that Japan could decide to source more of its corn from South America, where corn planted this year will become available for export shipments from April 2001. Brazil's 2000/01 corn production has been officially forecast at 38.49 million tons, up 21.67 percent from the previous year.

StarLink found in U.S. corn set for Japan food use

December 19
Reuters

Japan's Health Ministry has found genetically modified StarLink corn, banned by Tokyo, in a cargo of corn for food use awaiting shipment to Japan from the United States, the Kyodo news agency said on Tuesday.

The announcement came just a day after Japan's Agriculture Ministry said it had agreed to a U.S. plan for testing corn to be shipped to Japan for animal feed to ensure it does not contain StarLink gene-spliced corn.

Japan, the single biggest buyer of U.S. corn, has cut purchases sharply since a consumer group in late October found traces of StarLink in Japan's food and feed products made from U.S.-imported corn.

Kyodo said the sample containing StarLink was among five that had tested negative in the United States but were sent to Japan for a second check under an agreed procedure between the two countries,

The ministry has asked the U.S. government to halt the shipment of the 1,500 tons of the corn from which the sample was taken.

The finding could be a blow to U.S. exporters after traders said Monday's agreement on the plan for genetic testing to detect StarLink biotech corn in exports for animal feed would likely spur Japanese buying of U.S. corn this week.

The Agriculture Ministry said on Monday it and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would support exporters and importers seeking compensation from Aventis CropScience, the developer of StarLink corn, for the cost of supplying information and other expenses associated with the certification process.

Japan's Health Ministry agreed in November to a USDA plan to prevent StarLink from being mixed with food exports to Japan.

Japan imports four million tons for food and another 12 million tons for animal feed each year. StarLink is not approved for use in either food or animal feed in Japan.

StarLink, made by Franco-German drug firm Aventis SA , has not been approved by U.S. regulators for human consumption because of potential allergic reactions.

U.S. exports not hurt by StarLink incidents - embassies

December 19
Reuters

Japanese and South Korean diplomats said on Tuesday the discovery of StarLink bio-corn in cargoes destined for their countries' food and animal feed supply would not impact future U.S. corn exports.

Two separate U.S. corn shipments destined for Japan's food supply and South Korea's animal feed industry were found on Tuesday to be tainted with the genetically-altered StarLink corn.

Masaki Sakai, Japanese counselor for agriculture to the United States, said the world's biggest buyer of American corn had no intention of reneging on a U.S. trade agreement it approved earlier this week because of the incident.

Japan's Agriculture Ministry on Monday agreed to expand a U.S. plan, or protocol, for testing shipments of corn for animal feed to ensure they do not contain StarLink bio-corn. The original agreement, approved last month, applied only to U.S. corn exports bound for Japan for human consumption.

``We don't have to change the protocol system because of this happening,'' Masaki Sakai, Japanese counselor for agriculture to the United States, told Reuters. ``The double check is already incorporated in the system.''

Sakai said the Japanese government was ``expecting this kind of thing'' and had taken extra precautions when agreeing to the U.S. plan for StarLink testing.

Under the U.S.-Japan agreement, the Japanese government would conduct random tests on arriving shipments to confirm they are free of StarLink.

Sakai said the sample containing StarLink found on Tuesday was among five that had tested negative in the United States but were sent to Japan for a second check. The ministry has asked the U.S. government to halt the shipment of the 1,500 tons of the corn from which the sample was taken.

``I hope this kind of thing won't be happening very often in the future,'' Sakai said. ``But there is no intention to change the system.''

Japanese importers sharply cut back purchases in recent weeks due to concerns that shipments might be contaminated with StarLink, a corn variety made by Aventis SA that is genetically modified to repel pests.

Japan imports 4 million tons for food and another 12 million tons for animal feed each year. StarLink is not approved for use in either food or animal feed in Japan.

No problems for U.S. corn in South Korea

The Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) on Tuesday detected the StarLink variety in a U.S. corn shipment of 2,760 tons.

KFDA said the corn shipment from Agrix Inc. and Cargill Inc. was only for industrial or feed purposes, not for human consumption.

``There is no problem,'' Soo Hwa Lee, South Korean counselor of agriculture to the United States, told Reuters. ``This shipment was for animal feed, not for food use.''

Lee said he would meet with USDA officials sometime this week to discuss the incident.

USDA officials said a StarLink testing agreement similar to Japan's protocol should be completed and finalized soon.

South Korea imports almost two million tons of corn per year for human consumption, mostly from the United States.

U.S. regulators banned StarLink from human consumption in 1998 due to concerns it might cause allergic reactions.

Study validates safety of Bt crops

December 18
AgWeb.com

The study appears in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. The evaluation process involved reviewing data on three major Bt crops -- corn, cotton and potatoes -- that have been commercialized in several countries. Bt crops have been available since 1996.

"The combined safety and performance studies, combined with years of experience, have shown that Bt crops are providing important benefits on many different levels," said Dr. Roy Fuchs, director of regulatory science at Monsanto Company, a coauthor of the paper.

The most significant benefits of Bt crops include reduced use of synthetic chemical insecticides, the study pointed out. Bt crops contain a gene that produces a naturally occurring protein that protects plants from specific insect pests and provides a level of insect protection generally superior to conventional chemical insecticides. As a result, Bt crops require fewer applications of chemical insecticides, thereby significantly reducing the overall amount of chemical used on food, feed and fiber crops.

For 1998, the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP) estimated that 2 million fewer pounds of chemical insecticides were used to control cotton bollworms and budworms in six key cotton-producing states, compared to the insecticide levels used prior to the introduction of Bt cotton.

The study also found that Bt crop protection against insect damage translates to significant yield increases. In 1997, a year with a heavy infestation of the European corn borer in the United States, NCFAP reported that Bt corn provided a yield premium of almost 12 bushels per acre over conventional corn varieties. The same researchers estimated that the use of Bt cotton in the United States in 1998 resulted in an increased fiber yield of 85 million pounds.

In the United States, where commodity prices are at the lowest levels in decades, Bt crops reduce the total amount of input costs for farming, which translates to direct economic benefits to farmers, the study stated.

NCFAP estimated that in 1998 alone Bt cotton created approximately $92 million in value for U.S. cotton growers.

Protection of crops given new approach

December 18
The Scotsman

A FRESH approach to crop protection technology was unveiled by one of the biggest multinationals in the field yesterday.

This is aimed at linking the demands of the end user - processor, retailer or consumer - with the agronomic needs of the primary producer.

It will bring together specific crop treatments, including an enhanced biological control approach, with highly customized seeds and in time a strong biotechnology, or genetically modified, bias.

This is in spite of what Stephen Smith, head of Syngenta Seeds UK, described as "the regulatory constipation" of the European authorities in approving new developments.

The seed company is part of the $7 billion a year Syngenta group which emerged earlier this year from the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals, putting it among the top three players in terms of share of the $40 billion global crop protection and seeds market.

In London yesterday, Jan Suler, who heads up the UK and Ireland crop protection business, outlined a holistic approach to food production which would provide advantages for growers, processors, retailers, consumers and the environment.

To help it achieve this the company will be investing around $800 million a year in research and development, with about 20 per cent of this going into GM crop development. At the same time a large sum of money was being invested in its Bioline company which produces beneficial insects and mites to tackle the biological control market.

This fitted into the company’s philosophy of integrated crop management, linking more desirable seed traits with lower chemical usage, and farmer support in decision making.

Mad Cow reality confronts phony biotech scare

December 18
Tech Central Station column by Duane D. Freese

Have Greenpeace protesters finally thrown up one barricade too many against biotechnology and the benefits it offers?

In what at first looks like nothing unusual from an organization noted for its catchy name-calling and confrontational theatrics, Italian Greenpeace activists last week held up a ship carrying genetically modified (GM) soybeans headed for Venice to feed Europe's livestock. The same day in Montpelier, France, outside an international conference, drawing up rules for biotechnology trade, another set of protestors dumped tons of GM soy meal onto a U.S. flag.

The purpose of these escapades supposedly was to awaken European officials to the dangers, as seen by Greenpeace, of feeding even livestock genetically modified food. “Farmers don’t know what they are feeding their animals,” explained Lorenz Petersen, head of Greenpeace’s global anti-GM campaign.

Instead of GM's dangers, though, these activities offer a wake-up call about Greenpeace as a threat to health. For the day after Greenpeace spread its phony fears about imports of GM soybeans, the British science weekly Nature warned of something truly frightening. The report, by epidemiologist Christi Donnelly of London's Imperial College School of Medicine, found that as many as 9,800 French cattle had become infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad-cow disease. Worse, still, some of their meat has entered the human food chain.

In the 1990s, Britain suffered an epidemic of mad-cow disease, which led to at least 77 people who ate the meat dying of a human variant, the brain-eating Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Last month, the shockwave hit the continent when France reported two of its citizens had died from that affliction, while Germany found cattle there infected with mad-cow disease, as well. How many people now are infected is unknown, as the disease is impossible to diagnose until symptoms of dementia emerge, and that can take up to 25 years. The numbers could climb into the hundreds, possibly even thousands.

Little wonder then that people in Europe are panicked, afraid to eat their own beef. Meat sales have fallen by half in the last month. And governments for nations where herds have yet to be found infected have thrown up barriers to meat and livestock imports from their neighbors.

Smart Europeans now may start asking why they have a problem with their beef while the United States does not. The reason is simple. European farmers followed a “natural” way of adding protein to the diets of their cows, feeding them bone meal and meat byproducts. And that’s how the disease appears to have spread. Britain’s cattle, scientists there believe, picked up mad-cow disease from the bone meal and meat from slaughtered sheep infected with a related disease, scrapie.

American cattle, meanwhile, feed on grain supplemented by protein from soy meal. That’s no surprise, as the United States is the source of nearly half the soybean production in the world. And since the1996 introduction of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy beans – genetically modified to make it tolerant to a more environmentally friendly herbicide – crossbreeding and additional genetic modification has led to more than half the soy crop having some genetic modification.

Those GM crops are demonstrably as safe or even safer than conventional crops. As the U.S. House subcommittee on Basic Research noted in a report last April: “No product of conventional plant breeding … could meet the data requirements imposed on biotechnology products by U.S. regulatory agencies.”

Until now, that fact has been lost on Europeans, who’ve instead bought Greenpeace’s scientifically unsubstantiated line that so-called natural breeding and feeding is best for the environment and health.

Greenpeace was helped in spreading that propaganda by both Europe’s politically powerful, heavily subsidized farmers and politicians, who wanted to shift the cost of those subsidies off government budgets onto European consumers. Last year, the European Parliament ordered food producers to label GM products as if they posed some added risk to consumers, which they don’t. European food processors succumbed, vowing not to use any GM ingredients on products for human consumption, with American competitors following suit. The French government went so far as to ban planting GM soybeans there altogether.

This GM backlash by supposedly advanced nations has undercut investment in biotechnology, to the particular detriment of people in poorer countries. Developing lands stand to benefit most from crops genetically modified to resist drought or increase protein and vitamin potency. One GM crop alone, vitamin-A enhanced golden rice holds the promise of preventing blindness for up to 3 million malnourished poor children.

Now, it's Europe's health and economic well-being that is threatened by Greenpeace's anti-technology agenda. France's $20 billion beef industry faces a mad-cow meltdown. European farmers need 3 million tons of high-protein soy meal to replace that provided by potentially deadly meat by-products -- but most of the soybean supply is likely to have been genetically modified. And both Europeans and people elsewhere in the world need tools that only biotechnology can provide to screen meat and blood for safety.

Indeed, Americans face a threat to their blood supply if Europe fails to get a handle on its mad-cow epidemic. People needing transfusions might pick up Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease from tainted blood donated by travelers infected on trips to Europe. The Food and Drug Administration is weighing a blood ban for donations from people who have spent more than six months in Britain, a costly measure with blood in short supply.

Fortunately, biotechnology may provide an answer here, as well. Last month, the biotech firm Prion Developmental Laboratories, Inc., of Maryland began development of an effective and inexpensive screening test to detect mad-cow disease and its human variant. Heading the research is Dr. Robert Gallo, professor of virology at the University of Maryland and director of the Institute of Human Virology. Working with him in this substantially privately funded effort are noted scientific researchers at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, and from the Institute for Basic Research and Developmental Disabilities in Staten Island, N.Y.

It’s time Europeans wake up to the benefits that biotechnology has to offer. Following Greenpeace’s lead of dumping on the American flag and biotechnology will only lead them down the same path as the 4.5 million cattle that the mad-cow epidemic has thus far forced them to slaughter.

Scientists invent glowing potato

December 18
Agence France Presse

Scientists in Scotland claimed Monday to have invented a genetically-modified potato which glows bright green to let the farmer know when it needs watering.

The team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh claim their invention will help make better use of limited water supplies in developing countries.

It will also increase crop yields by giving an early warning when the plants do not have enough water, the most common cause of disappointing harvests.

The scientists, led by Antony Trewavas, introduced a fluorescent gene from a jellyfish into the leaves of the potato plant.

When the plant becomes dehydrated, a protein is formed within the plant which triggers the gene, making it glow. This cannot be seen by the naked eye, but is visible using a hand held monitor.

The glowing plants will prove useful to farmers because, "in the long term, in 40 years or so, water will be the most expensive agricultural commodity," Trewavas said.

He added that only a few of the genetically-modified plants need to be planted in the crop to gauge whether there is enough water.

They can be removed before harvesting if there is any concern among consumers about eating modified potatoes, and because they are tubers they will not cross-fertilize with the rest of the crop, he claimed.