“The Department of Agriculture (DA) was either lying or uninformed when it assured consumers that U.S. GMO rice has the seal of approval of international food safety agencies.”

BY GREENPEACE
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol/ VIII, No. 13, May 4-10, 2008

Greenpeace debunked the Department of Agriculture’s assurances on U.S. GMO rice, and questioned the suspicious lack of transparency of the government agency’s GMO assessment process.

“The Department of Agriculture (DA) was either lying or uninformed when it assured consumers that U.S. GMO rice has the seal of approval of international food safety agencies. Contrary to the DA’s claims, the GMO rice LL601 has not been approved anywhere in the world outside of the United States,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner Daniel Ocampo.

“Greenpeace knows that there have been no findings of safety of the GMO rice LL601 by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), nor the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA), nor the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). And for the DA’s own GMO regulators to claim the opposite is completely unbelievable. We are convinced this puts into question the DA’s credibility, their honesty and integrity, with regard to GMO assessments,” he added.

Greenpeace is also questioning the “lateral flow” or “lateral strip” method of testing which the DA alleged they used to test rice samples from supermarkets, and for the 44,000 metric ton shipment of U.S. rice, which arrived in the country last February 20. Using the lateral flow or strip test to determine GMO content is not an acceptable protocol for detecting LL601 or LL62 GMO rice under both the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and European Union standards.

Since late February 2008, Greenpeace has been challenging the DA to conduct a joint sampling of the National Food Authority’s US rice shipment using stringent European protocols to verify whether the U.S. rice is indeed free of GMOs. But instead of verifying the rice’s safety, the DA proceeded to distribute the U.S. rice to consumers despite its high
possibility of genetic-contamination.

Last week, Greenpeace revealed that the illegal GMO-rice LL601 has again entered the country undetected by the DA, in Blue Ribbon and Riceland long grain rice brands sold in S & R supermarkets in Manila. Greenpeace first detected the presence of the said GMO in November 2006.

No GMO rice is approved in the Philippines, but the DA, which is tasked to regulate the entry of GMOs into the country, has made no action on both incidents of unauthorized entry of GMO rice.

“The big question underlying the U.S. GMO rice issue is whether the Philippines is capable of truly regulating and assessing a GMO for safety. Greenpeace has noted with growing alarm how the Philippines’ regulatory bodies for GMO crops have never rejected an application for importation of a GMO from any of the giant GMO corporations, despite documented cases on questions of their safety and rejection by other countries, even by countries where they were developed,” said Ocampo.

“But what is worse now is the DA’s casual attitude toward the presence in our staple food of a GMO which they have never yet approved nor authorized. Their cavalier position is telling of the government agency’s industry bias at the expense of consumer and environmental safety and farmers’ livelihoods,” he added.

Greenpeace campaigns for GMO-free crop and food production grounded on the principles of sustainability, protection of biodiversity, and providing all people access to safe and nutritious food. Genetic-engineering is an unnecessary and unwanted technology that contaminates the environment, threatens biodiversity, and poses unacceptable risks to health. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)

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