The revelation that commercial rice in the US was found to be contaminated with an unlicensed genetically engineered strain shows how easily the food supply in the US and in countries importing US food can be tainted, watchdogs say.

The long grain rice that was found to contain trace amounts of genetically engineered (GE) Liberty Link Rice 601, produced by the agro-chemical giant Bayer CropScience and never intended for commercial release, was immediately banned in Japan. The US is responsible for 12 per cent of the global rice trade and many countries rely on US rice to feed their people. The main importers of US rice are Mexico, Central America, Saudi Arabia, Canada and South Africa.

Long grain rice, the type that was contaminated, comprises 80 per cent of US rice exports.

“Clearly there are a lot of countries that could be impacted here,” said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the Centre for Food Safety in Washington. “I think quite a lot of these countries are in Latin America and they should be concerned about this. With genetically engineered crops, you can have unintended, unpredictable effects that can have impacts on human health or the environment,” Freese added. The 601 strain is one of several products designed to resist certain herbicides but is not yet approved by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for consumption or cultivation anywhere in the world.

Bayer said in a statement it was cooperating with the USDA and said the protein used in the 601 strain was safe.”The protein is well known to regulators and has been confirmed safe for food and feed use in a number of crops by regulators in many countries, including the EU, Japan, Mexico, US and Canada,” the statement said. Washington has strongly defended the Bayer product. US Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns said this week the contamination posed no risk to human health, food safety or the environment. “The protein found in LL RICE 601 is approved for use in other products,” Johanns said.

International environmentalists and green groups who fear contamination of the global food chain, in part because of the low cost of GE rice compared to GE-free brands, argue that the EC should have banned the rice. There were also calls for major importing regions such as the Americas, Africa and the Middle East to take similar steps immediately until the US can guarantee that its rice is not contaminated.

“A message needs to be sent to the US and to agro-chemical giant Bayer that genetic contamination and ‘accidents’ with our food are not acceptable, and they must be held liable for cleaning it up,” said Jeremy Tager of Greenpeace International, which has called for a ban on US GE riceTager. “Countries that import US rice, such as the EU, Mexico, Brazil and Canada, must become serious about preventing this kind of threat to our food supplies by banning any imports of GE rice, removing all contaminated food from supermarket shelves and rejecting applications for the commercial cultivation of rice,” he said. — IPS