US rice farmers sue Bayer CropScience over GM rice
CBGnetwork | 29.08.2006 15:04 | Bio-technology | Health | Cambridge
LOS ANGELES, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California have sued Bayer CropScience, alleging its genetically modified rice has contaminated the crop, attorneys for the farmers said on Monday.
28 Aug 2006, Reuters
US rice farmers sue Bayer CropScience over GM rice
LOS ANGELES, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California have sued Bayer CropScience, alleging its genetically modified rice has contaminated the crop, attorneys for the farmers said on Monday.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock, law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll said in a statement.
The farmers alleged that the unit of Germany's Bayer AG failed to prevent its genetically modified rice, which has not been approved for human consumption, from entering the food chain.
As a result, they said, Japan and the European Union have placed strict limits on U.S. rice imports and U.S. rice prices have dropped dramatically.
A Bayer representative could not be immediately reached for comment.
U.S. agriculture and food safety authorities learned on July 31 that Bayer's unapproved rice had been found in commercial bins in Arkansas and Missouri. While the United States is a small rice grower, it is one of the world's largest exporters, sending half of its crop to foreign buyers.
The genetically engineered long grain rice has a protein known as Liberty Link, which allows the crop to withstand applications of an herbicide used to kill weeds.
The European Commission said on Wednesday the EU would require U.S. long grain rice imports to be certified as free from the unauthorized strain. The commission said validated tests must be done by an accredited laboratory and be accompanied by a certificate.
Japan, the largest importer of U.S. rice, suspended imports of U.S. long-grain rice a week ago.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration have said there are no public health or environmental risks associated with the genetically engineered rice.
The United States is expected to produce a rice crop valued at $1.88 billion in 2006. U.S. rice growers are responsible for about 12 percent of world rice trade. Three-fourths of the crop is long grain, grown almost entirely in the lower Mississippi Valley. California, the No. 2 rice state, grows short grain rice.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 27, 2006
Biotech foods: A cat that won't stay bagged
Another unapproved product finds its way into marketplace.
In a global marketplace that dislikes genetically modified (GM) foods, America's agricultural exports must rely on trust above all -- trust that GM varieties are safe to eat, preferable to grow and strictly regulated.
On the first point, the scientific support is pretty strong. On the second, which is about philosophy as much as science, it looks to be an uphill fight. And on the third, well. . . can't we go back to talking about safety?
That seems to be the approach at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose response to the latest regulatory breakdown -- inexplicable mixing of biotech rice into regular stocks -- can only make matters worse, trustwise, with skeptical export customers.
Friday before last, Secretary Mike Johanns announced that Bayer CropScience had found "trace amounts" of its engineered long-grain variety in U.S. bins holding rice from the 2005 crop. Although this GM rice was "regulated" -- fedspeak meaning "unapproved for market release" -- Johanns stressed that both his department and the Food and Drug Administration had found it to pose no threat to human or environmental health.
The announcement didn't mention that Bayer had notified USDA of its discovery on July 31, three workweeks earlier. Johanns acknowledged the timing at a press conference, explaining that USDA had withheld the information while trying to validate a test that producers, shippers and customers could use to detect the Bayer rice, an herbicide-resistant variety ref="hknown as Liberty Link 601. Oh, and they were reviewing safety data, too -- not a time-consuming task, since the basis for declaring the 601 variety safe is only that its special protein is the same inserted into two earlier Bayer strains that were "deregulated" years ago.
Anyway, the testing is all about protecting sales, not safety. It was a sure bet that Japan and the EU countries would ban raw rice or processed foods contaminated, in their view, with the Bayer strain. Saving this billion-dollar export market required a way to certify shipments as GM-free.
Alas, three workweeks wasn't enough time for USDA to prepare answers to such questions as how the Bayer rice, field-tested between 1998 and 2001, could turn up in the 2005 harvest. Or how many rice bins, in how many states, contained the modified strain. Or whether any of the GM rice had reached U.S. supermarket shelves.
Some of this information has surfaced subsequently. According to Riceland Foods, the nation's largest rice marketer, the 601 strain was detected "across the rice belt" in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Moreover, Riceland also said it had been investigating the matter since January, when a customer discovered GM rice in an export shipment. How it got there remains a mystery, but a solution has emerged: Bayer will now seek retroactive USDA approval to sell Liberty Link 601.
That may be of some help to American rice producers, who have seen prices plummet since Johanns' announcement. But it won't do much to boost their credibility, or the USDA's, with foreign customers. That will require a regulatory system that can be trusted to do what it claims -- under leadership that treats its customers' concerns with respect and candor, and discloses screwups without rationalization and delay.
Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany)
www.CBGnetwork.org
CBGnetwork@aol.com
Tel: (+49) 211-333 911 Fax: (+49) 211-333 940
Advisory Board
Prof. Juergen Junginger, designer, Krefeld,
Prof. Dr. Juergen Rochlitz, chemist, former member of the Bundestag, Burgwald
Wolfram Esche, attorney, Cologne
Dr. Sigrid Müller, pharmacologist, Bremen
Eva Bulling-Schroeter, member of the Bundestag, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Anton Schneider, biologist, Neubeuern
Dorothee Sölle, theologian, Hamburg (died 2003)
Dr. Janis Schmelzer, historian, Berlin
Dr. Erika Abczynski, pediatrician, Dormagen
US rice farmers sue Bayer CropScience over GM rice
LOS ANGELES, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California have sued Bayer CropScience, alleging its genetically modified rice has contaminated the crop, attorneys for the farmers said on Monday.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock, law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll said in a statement.
The farmers alleged that the unit of Germany's Bayer AG failed to prevent its genetically modified rice, which has not been approved for human consumption, from entering the food chain.
As a result, they said, Japan and the European Union have placed strict limits on U.S. rice imports and U.S. rice prices have dropped dramatically.
A Bayer representative could not be immediately reached for comment.
U.S. agriculture and food safety authorities learned on July 31 that Bayer's unapproved rice had been found in commercial bins in Arkansas and Missouri. While the United States is a small rice grower, it is one of the world's largest exporters, sending half of its crop to foreign buyers.
The genetically engineered long grain rice has a protein known as Liberty Link, which allows the crop to withstand applications of an herbicide used to kill weeds.
The European Commission said on Wednesday the EU would require U.S. long grain rice imports to be certified as free from the unauthorized strain. The commission said validated tests must be done by an accredited laboratory and be accompanied by a certificate.
Japan, the largest importer of U.S. rice, suspended imports of U.S. long-grain rice a week ago.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration have said there are no public health or environmental risks associated with the genetically engineered rice.
The United States is expected to produce a rice crop valued at $1.88 billion in 2006. U.S. rice growers are responsible for about 12 percent of world rice trade. Three-fourths of the crop is long grain, grown almost entirely in the lower Mississippi Valley. California, the No. 2 rice state, grows short grain rice.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 27, 2006
Biotech foods: A cat that won't stay bagged
Another unapproved product finds its way into marketplace.
In a global marketplace that dislikes genetically modified (GM) foods, America's agricultural exports must rely on trust above all -- trust that GM varieties are safe to eat, preferable to grow and strictly regulated.
On the first point, the scientific support is pretty strong. On the second, which is about philosophy as much as science, it looks to be an uphill fight. And on the third, well. . . can't we go back to talking about safety?
That seems to be the approach at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose response to the latest regulatory breakdown -- inexplicable mixing of biotech rice into regular stocks -- can only make matters worse, trustwise, with skeptical export customers.
Friday before last, Secretary Mike Johanns announced that Bayer CropScience had found "trace amounts" of its engineered long-grain variety in U.S. bins holding rice from the 2005 crop. Although this GM rice was "regulated" -- fedspeak meaning "unapproved for market release" -- Johanns stressed that both his department and the Food and Drug Administration had found it to pose no threat to human or environmental health.
The announcement didn't mention that Bayer had notified USDA of its discovery on July 31, three workweeks earlier. Johanns acknowledged the timing at a press conference, explaining that USDA had withheld the information while trying to validate a test that producers, shippers and customers could use to detect the Bayer rice, an herbicide-resistant variety ref="hknown as Liberty Link 601. Oh, and they were reviewing safety data, too -- not a time-consuming task, since the basis for declaring the 601 variety safe is only that its special protein is the same inserted into two earlier Bayer strains that were "deregulated" years ago.
Anyway, the testing is all about protecting sales, not safety. It was a sure bet that Japan and the EU countries would ban raw rice or processed foods contaminated, in their view, with the Bayer strain. Saving this billion-dollar export market required a way to certify shipments as GM-free.
Alas, three workweeks wasn't enough time for USDA to prepare answers to such questions as how the Bayer rice, field-tested between 1998 and 2001, could turn up in the 2005 harvest. Or how many rice bins, in how many states, contained the modified strain. Or whether any of the GM rice had reached U.S. supermarket shelves.
Some of this information has surfaced subsequently. According to Riceland Foods, the nation's largest rice marketer, the 601 strain was detected "across the rice belt" in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Moreover, Riceland also said it had been investigating the matter since January, when a customer discovered GM rice in an export shipment. How it got there remains a mystery, but a solution has emerged: Bayer will now seek retroactive USDA approval to sell Liberty Link 601.
That may be of some help to American rice producers, who have seen prices plummet since Johanns' announcement. But it won't do much to boost their credibility, or the USDA's, with foreign customers. That will require a regulatory system that can be trusted to do what it claims -- under leadership that treats its customers' concerns with respect and candor, and discloses screwups without rationalization and delay.
Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany)
www.CBGnetwork.org
CBGnetwork@aol.com Tel: (+49) 211-333 911 Fax: (+49) 211-333 940
Advisory Board
Prof. Juergen Junginger, designer, Krefeld,
Prof. Dr. Juergen Rochlitz, chemist, former member of the Bundestag, Burgwald
Wolfram Esche, attorney, Cologne
Dr. Sigrid Müller, pharmacologist, Bremen
Eva Bulling-Schroeter, member of the Bundestag, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Anton Schneider, biologist, Neubeuern
Dorothee Sölle, theologian, Hamburg (died 2003)
Dr. Janis Schmelzer, historian, Berlin
Dr. Erika Abczynski, pediatrician, Dormagen
CBGnetwork
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CBGnetwork@aol.com
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American farmers sue Bayer over GM rice
30.08.2006 07:17
August 30, 2006
American farmers sue Bayer over GM rice
From James Doran, Wall Street Correspondent
BAYER has come under fire from a group of angry US farmers, who are suing
the German chemicals and drugs manufacturer for allegedly contaminating
millions of dollars’ worth of their crops with its genetically modified
rice.
The lawsuit is the latest litigation to hit Bayer, which is still reeling
from the 2001 recall of its Baycol cholesterol-lowering medication. Bayer
has spent €1.2 billion (£810 million) to settle more than 3,100 Baycol
cases, and another 3,000 are still pending.
Bayer confirmed that the US rice farmers had filed a lawsuit alleging that
the company failed to prevent its GM rice from contaminating their crops but
declined to give further details.
The price of American rice has dropped dramatically in recent years, in part
because US rice exports to the EU are restricted by laws controlling the
sale of genetically modified crops. Last year, the EU imported 198,000
tonnes of long-grain rice from the US, worth $67 million (£35 million).
The dispute with the farmers came as Bayer revealed that it will cut some
1,500 jobs from its farm chemicals unit as sales at the division continued
to slide.
Werner Wenning, chief executive, said that the company would cut 8 per cent
of its farm chemical workforce — at an initial cost of €330 million but
saving €300 million a year — because a drought in Brazil had hit demand for
its fungicides.
Profit for the second quarter increased 11 per cent. Net income increased to
€452 million from €406 million last year. Sales rose 5.8 per cent to €7.1
billion.
==========================================
USA rice trade stalled by rogue GM contamination
29/08/2006 09:00:00
Farmers Weekly
American long-grain rice producers are facing interruptions to their global
export business following contamination of commercial supplies with an
unapproved GM variety.
The GM rice concerned is known as LLRICE601 and was developed by German
biotech company Bayer in the 1990s, and field tested in the USA from 1998 to
2001.
Bayer notified the US department of agriculture of the contamination at the
end of July, following analysis of samples taken from bulk stores in the
USA.
The US authorities then set about their own tests.
US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns went public at the end of last week,
but insisted that LLRICE601 was totally safe to humans and the environment,
even though it had never been fully approved in the USA, or any other
country.
"Based on the available data and information, the US Food and Drugs
Administration has concluded that the presence of LLRICE601 in the food and
feed supply poses no safety concerns," he said.
It is understood that the variety, which is resistant to the glufosinate
Liberty Link, contains the same GM protein as is found in two other GM crops
that have been approved.
Bayer says it withdrew the application for a licence for LLRICE601 in the
USA because it had no intention of commercialising the variety.
But, now that the product is "in the marketplace", it has decided to apply
for a licence.
Despite these reassurances, the Japanese authorities imposed an immediate
trade ban on all US long-grain rice imports.
Environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth International is demanding a
similar response from other importing countries.
"This is a complete scandal," said anti-GM campaigner Nnimmo Bassey.
"The biotech industry has once again failed to control its products and lax
regulations in the USA mean that consumers have been put at risk."
If this call is heeded, US rice exporters face massive potential damage.
Around half the crop is exported, earning almost $1bn (£525m).
The USA currently ranks fourth in world rice exports, behind Thailand,
Vietnam and China.
by Philip Clarke (About this Author)
==========================================
[How reliable will these tests be?]
US Certifies Test To Detect Bayer Biotech Rice-Sources
By Bill Tomson, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Dow Jones
bayer/n20060824130109990002?cid=1217
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Department of Agriculture has
certified a test to detect an unapproved genetically modified variety
of long grain rice that somehow made it into the commercial market, a
USDA spokesman said Thursday.
Another test that can also detect approved versions of Bayer
CropScience's GM rice is not yet ready, other U.S. government
officials said Thursday.
The test certified by the USDA will tell millers specifically if
Bayer's experimental and unapproved herbicide-resistant "LL Rice-601"
is present.
The other test, which a USDA official said could be certified as
early as late Thursday, is a more general test and would detect other
LL, or Liberty Link, biotech rice. The USDA has approved two LL lines
of rice produced by Bayer: LL Rice-62 and LL Rice-06.
The USDA official, who asked not to be named, said government
officials do not believe that the approved GM rice products made it
into the U.S. commercial market because Bayer has pledged not to sell
them to farmers.
Another USDA official, also speaking on terms of anonymity, said USDA
does not yet know how the unapproved Bayer product got mixed into
commercial stocks.
It was on Aug. 18 that the USDA announced that traces of the
unapproved GM long grain rice were discovered in grain bins in
Arkansas and Missouri.
U.S. producers and exporters may need the newly certified test for
foreign buyers that demand proof that the unapproved GM rice is not
in shipments. The USDA had intended on having the certification for
the test done last week, government officials said, so it would be
ready for when USDA announced the GM mix up to the public on Aug. 18.
This is the same test that Bayer used to originally determine that
some of its experimental "LL Rice-601" made it into the food supply.
Company officials said the test works fine and that USDA's Federal
Grain Inspection Service is merely confirming that.
corporate media catches up / The Times