I read the latest issue of Fortune on rice contamination earlier yesterday:
Last November, over the howls of anti-GMO (that’s genetically modified organisms) activists, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice, known as LL601. The department said the genes that it approved are similar to those inserted for years into canola and corn, with no apparent ill effects. The experts at the USDA, the EPA and the Food and Drug Administration, all of which bear some responsibility for regulating transgenic food, say the contamination is nothing to worry about.
Then again, the experts also have dismissed repeated warnings that genetically modified crops can’t be managed or controlled. When organic farmers worried that their fields could be invaded by genetically modified plants grown nearby, regulators told them there was nothing to fear. The biotech industry promised that experimental, gene-altered plants could be grown in open fields and never, ever end up in the neighborhood Safeway.
Oops.
In any event, after last year’s contamination became public, and after rice prices took a tumble, and after Europe said it no longer wanted any American rice, and after several other countries, including Japan and Iraq (!), demanded rigorous testing of U.S. rice, the industry moved to contain the damage.
[…]
Deeter, Ventria’s CEO, says there’s no chance that the pharma rice will find its way into the food supply, as Liberty Link did: “We’re more strictly regulated, by a factor of ten – not for any good reason, by the way.”
In the USDA ruling, Rebecca Bech, an APHIS administrator, wrote, “The combination of isolation distance, production practices, and rice biology make it extremely unlikely that this rice would impact the U.S. commercial rice supply.”
In other words, there’s nothing – nothing at all – to fear. [Attack of the mutant rice. Marc Gunther. Fortune July 2 2007]
Spot the humor.
