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URGENT COMMUNICATION FROM GM FREE CYMRU
TO COMMISSIONERS DIMAS, KYPRIANOU AND MANDELSON

24th August 2006

Dear Commissioners

GM Rice Contamination Incident

We are writing to protest about the belated and totally inadequate
response of the EC to the latest GM food contamination incident, in
which American rice destined for export and human food consumption
has been found to be contaminated with the unauthorised GM variety
LL601. You may be in no doubt that thousands of tonnes of export
rice are involved here, from all five of the southern rice-producing
states. Statements from the spokesman for Riceland to the New York
Times (1) make it clear that the Rice Producers Association is very
worried, and that the scale of the pollution will be revealed
gradually by a process of drip-feed -- exactly what happened with the
Bt10 fiasco last year.

You appear (2) to be following exactly the same line as you did last
year over Bt10, by (a) politely asking the US Administration for more
information; (b) stating that all future rice import cargoes from
the US will have to be accompanied by certification stating that
tests have been done and that the cargoes are free of LL601; (c)
seeking information from Bayer and the US authorities on a validation
test which can be conducted in approved laboratories and checked by
JRC and CRL; and (d) assuming that national authorities will carry
out controls on products already on the EU market, to ensure that
they are free from the unauthorised GM rice

We understand that the EC is frightened by those nasty people at the
WTO and in the American administration, and is afraid of taking
actions that might be construed as "disproportionate", but unlike the
Japanese you appear to be oblivious to the true scale of this
problem. We haver already criticized you for complacency and for
apparently conniving in the contamination of essential food supplies
(3), and we now share the concerns expressed by Greenpeace
International that your actions lack leadership and are reactive
rather than proactive.

Please take note of the following:

1. Long-grain rice is a staple food crop worldwide, and it is used
in unprocessed and slightly processed form in a wide range of food
products including babyfoods. Do you realize the significance of
that statement? (4)

2. The contamination was discovered in export silos, suggesting to
us that it may well have been destined for the European market (Japan
takes mostly short and medium grain rice from California). You tell
us that 20,000 tonnes of US long-grained rice comes into the EU each
month-- that means 240,000 tonnes per year. Even if only a small
proportion of that is contaminated, that adds up to massive
contamination in the human food supply system.

3. LL601 was abandoned by Bayer five years ago as a failed variety,
and if it has appeared now on a substantial scale as a contaminant it
is absolutely certain that it must have been present in US exports of
long-grain rice over the past five years. That means that it is
already on the shelves of European supermarkets. We suspect that
Riceland and Bayer have picked up positive test results before,
probably on an increasing scale year-on-year, but that the scale of
positive results has now become so large that the contamination could
no longer be kept secret.

4. With respect to a testing protocol for LL601, we are sure that
Bayer will connive with a chosen laboratory to devise a test
guaranteed to provide false negatives, and will refuse to provide
accurate data to EFSA and JRC on the genetic character of the variety
in question. If the company does send reference materials to JRC, it
will ensure that these materials will "validate" the test method but
will not indicate any changes that might have occurred in the variety
over the five years 2001-2006. This will be an exact repeat of the
situation that arose over Bt10 -- and we remind you that Syngenta has
treated the EC with utter contempt by refusing to supply the
materials repeatedly requested by Dr Van den Eede and his colleagues
over the past 18 months (5). We predict that you will be manipulated
in exactly the same way by Bayer in this case.

5. With respect to your hope that EU national authorities will
conduct border controls and also test for contaminated rice already
on supermarket shelves, we fear that nothing will happen quickly, if
at all. In the UK, GM Freeze's survey of Port Authorities and Trading
Standards Offices showed that either have the capacity to test for
illegal GMOs -- they don't have the gene sequences, the equipment,
the money, the staff or the willingness to do anything. Within the
UK. there was so much buck-passing last year between DEFRA, FSA, ACRE
and ACNFP that nobody could work out what was happening; there was
some testing for Bt10, very belatedly, but there was so much
complacency and indecision that we were forced, in the end, to
complain to the Secretary of Health about criminal negligence on the
part of FSA.

6. We are aware that EFSA is looking at Bayer’s LLRICE62, which
supposedly contains the same modified protein as the unauthorised LL
Rice 601 in question (6). EFSA will no doubt conclude that LLRICE62
is perfectly safe, and will put out a statement to the effect that
LL601 is also safe. That, if it happens, would be a grossly
negligent and indefensible action, since neither EFSA nor anybody
else knows the genetic makeup of LL601 or the changes that have
inevitably occurred since 2001. Novel proteins created through GM
are unpredictable in their behaviour, and are uniquely dangerous.

7. We concur with the statements made by Greenpeace and other NGOs
that this episode shows a complete breakdown of the US regulatory
system, with USDA and the US Dept of Agriculture culpable (7). GM
contamination is spiralling out of control in the US, with the tacit
agreement of USDA, and it is time that the EC recognized this.

We gather that food safety experts from across Europe are meeting on
Friday 25th August to review the actions taken thus far. In our view
these actions are wholly inadequate, and in the light of the new
revelations concerning the scale of LL601 contamination and its
dangers for human health, the EC must forget about export-point
certification and immediately ban all rice imports from the US
pending full disclosure of all the facts pertinent to this case.
That would NOT be a disproportionate action: after all, your prime
responsibility, as we have reminded you on many previous occasions,
is the protection of public health within the EU.

In view of the seriousness of this situation, we are treating this
communication as an Open Letter and will circulate it widely.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Brian John
GM Free Cymru

=================================

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/business/22rice.html?_r=1
Unapproved Rice Strain Found in Wide Area
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: August 22, 2006
New York Times

(2) Commission Question and Answers:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/
06/310&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Commission Press Release:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/
06/1120&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

(3) http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6925

(4) http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/cereals.htm#What%20type%20of%
20Rice%20do%20I%20use%20for%20Homemade%20Rice%20Cereals
http://www.cowandgate.ie/ASP/show_subject.asp?id=500

(5) http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEX/
06/0404&form
at=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

(6) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/
06/310&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

(7) The USDA complacency should come as no surprise. In a recent
case in Hawaii, a US district judge called USDA's regulatory
heedlessness "arbitrary and capricious" and "an unequivocal violation
of a clear congressional mandate." That echoes similar conclusions
reached by the USDA's own auditors last year. After reviewing two
years of records, the auditors concluded that the
agency's biotechnology regulators overlooked violations of their own
rules, failed to inspect sites and did not ensure that genetically
engineered crops were destroyed after field trials. In some cases,
regulators did not even know the locations of trials.