[NYTr] Probe into contaminated rice ends - USDA clueless

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Washington Post, October 6 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502176.html?nav=hcmodule

Probe Into Tainted Rice Ends

USDA Unable to Find Explanation or Determine Blame

By Rick Weiss

More than 14 months after the Agriculture Department began an
investigation into how the U.S. supply of long-grain rice became
tainted with an unapproved genetically engineered variety -- an event
that continues to disrupt U.S. exports -- the government announced
yesterday that it could not figure out how the contamination happened. 

Agency officials said documents from several years ago that might have
helped them determine what went wrong had been lost or destroyed,
though not in violation of any record-keeping regulations. Lacking
clear evidence of who was responsible, they said, the government will
not take enforcement action against any person or entity, including
Bayer CropScience, the company whose gene-altered products slipped into
the food supply. 

"The exact mechanism for the introductions could not be determined,"
Cindy Smith, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS), said in a news media teleconference
yesterday afternoon. 

The widespread, low-level contamination with experimental genes that
make the rice pesticide-tolerant, one of several such events in recent
years, prompted countries around the world to cut off imports of U.S.
long-grain rice. Rice prices plummeted, and many farmers, scientists
and biotechnology activists called for an overhaul of the oversight
system for gene-altered crops. 

While some countries have begun to accept U.S. rice with added testing,
the European Union and Russia have not -- a trade loss valued in the
hundreds of millions of dollars a year. 

The investigation, by APHIS and the department's Office of the Inspector
General, consumed more than 8,500 staff hours and included site visits
to more than 45 locations in 11 states and Puerto Rico, Smith said. The
results were posted yesterday on the Web in an eight-page document,
most of which is a review of previously reported background material. 

APHIS also released a four-page "Lessons Learned" document, which
suggests, among other things, that it may be wise for the government to
start requiring companies to keep maps and other records on when and
where they plant their experimental crops.

In a brief statement released yesterday, Bayer's U.S. unit, based in
Research Triangle Park, N.C., said it was pleased that the government
had finished its investigation "without concluding that Bayer
CropScience violated any legal requirement." The company also commended
the government for affirming that the genes pose no health threat. 

But critics assailed the report as yet more evidence that the nation's
regulatory system for gene-altered crops is broken. 

"This underlines the anxiety people have about more such incidents
occurring," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists,
a science-based advocacy group that has called for a more rigorous
approval process for biotech crops. "After all this investigation,
there is no reason to think there are not more of these genes out there
just waiting to be discovered." 

The USDA report notes in passing that, during its investigation, it
discovered seven instances in which unapproved gene-altered crops were
either planted outside the time periods allowed under their permits or
were not harvested and destroyed within the required timeframes. 

In their primary investigation, officials determined that between 1998
and 2001 one of Bayer's then-experimental rice varieties, called LL601,
had been planted in close proximity to conventional "Cheniere" rice
plants being raised for seed production at a Louisiana State University
field station in Crowley. Pollen from LL601 may have fertilized the
Cheniere. Inadvertent mixing of the two kinds of grains may also have
been a factor. 

However, lacking maps showing where specific crops were grown and
lacking records on whether workers cleaned machinery between batches as
required, the story is opaque, officials said. 

A second contamination event, involving a Bayer gene called LL604, was
probably the result of inadvertent mixing rather than cross-pollination
because LL604 appears never to have been grown near the conventional
"Clearfield 131" variety that got tainted. 

Agriculture officials returned yesterday from Brussels where they
briefed officials of the E.U.'s European Commission on the latest
findings and sought to sketch out a mutually agreeable system of
testing that could allow U.S. exports to resume. A preliminary readout
from the commission is expected with the next week or so. 

Domestically, the USDA has proposed rule changes to speed the approvals
of low-risk biotech crops while adding requirements for others.