Non-regulated modified rice removed from Dutch shop shelves
12 January 2007
As a result from unease with consumers about unwittingly eating food containing, or consisting of, genetically modified plants, the Netherlands, and Europe in general, observe strict and detailed rules. Any crop with a certain modification has to be permitted officially through centralized European procedures first. Afterwards, rules regarding 'labeling' warrant that the general public is informed through product labels whether a product contains more than trace quantities of, permited, genetically modified plants.
In some parts of the world more, and other, genetically modifieds crops are admitted. Many staple crops are shipped on a global scale. As a result, incidents occur where insufficient checks have lead to non-allowed products reaching European shop shelves. Nowadays, such events no longer result in front page headlines and editorial commentaries. The paragraph below is derived from an article published on September 14 on page 15 of the Dutch daily NRC. A all column taken together it measured about 60 lines of text.
In the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, in all 1210 kilograms of rice
noodles were taken off the shelves. The product in question was imported from
China. It was (in part) produced from transgenic rice varieties not registered
in Europe. Supermarket chain Aldi found American rice containg kernels
from non-regulated varieties. In Switserland too analyses by a super
market chain revealed that some rice shipments contained rice kernels from
not-permitted, genetically modified varieties. In august 2006, in the port of
Rotterdam, 20% of a ship's cargo of rice was not admitted to the Netherlands,
because genetically modified rice kernels were found.
According to the
article in all instances it turned out to be Liberty Link rice 601. The Chinese
government is reported to have declared that no permission is granted for any
commercial scale growing of modified rice, but that experiments do take place. The EU as well as China are investigating the matter, teh article closed.
Liberty Link rice can, besides or in stead of all more convential methods of weed contarol, withstand spraying the herbicide Liberty. THe active ingredient, glufosinate-ammonium, can also be found in such products as Finale. As a result of the very limited scale on which rice is grown in Europe, the absence of wild relatives, the selfpollinating character of the crop, and little chance for becoming a weed, rice is not likely to become the subject of European ecological (ERGO) research (not taken into account the fact that rice flojur products like noodles will not give rise to plats anyhow). Dutch parliament and the Dutch secretary for the environment mr. Van Geel, have agreed some subjects may need further research. By doing so, the current high quality of ecological risk assessment can be maintained when assessing new generations of modified crops which may harbour several, and comlex, introduced traits.
source: Based on an article in the Dutch daily NRC, September 14 2006