USDA Challenges GE imports

In an apparently sharp reversal, the US Department of Agriculture is now borrowing all the arguments that it once pooh-poohed against obligatory trade of genetically engineered foods.

For decades, safe food advocates around the world urged caution when the US insisted on the obligation of all trade partners to accept exports of US genetically-engineered products. Now, China wants to export GE rice to the US and the shoe is on the other foot. The USDA considers the implications of importing GE products in an audit report.

The USDA response sounds eerily familiar. "Due to its science-based regulatory system and the willingness of the U.S. producers to adopt agricultural biotechnology, the United States has been in the forefront of developing transgenic plants and animals since the 1990s," the report says. "More recently, however, other nations have started to plant more acres to transgenic crops. They have also begun developing transgenic plants and animals of their own. Some of these new plants and animals will be unknown to, and therefore unapproved by, the U.S. regulatory system. As this trend continues, other nations could begin exporting - inadvertently or deliberately - unapproved transgenic plants or animals into the United States."

The alarm, sounding very similar to the once-ridiculed claims of food sovereignty, responds to Chinese efforts to export GE rice to the US. "While the consequences of the unapproved transgenic plants or animals entering the U.S. food supply are difficult to foresee, such an event could provoke health and environmental concerns and interfere with commerce," the USDA audit report claims. China "has committed to investing $500 million in biotechnology by 2010 and has recently announced the creation of a new transgenic rice. To mitigate any risks to the U.S. environment, agriculture, and commerce from unapproved transgenic plants and animals entering the U.S. food supply, USDA will need to monitor such developments closely."

The full USDA Audit Report can be viewed at:
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/50601-17-TE.pdf