-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 26, 2007 4:32:10 PM PDT
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Subject: Genetically-Modified Species Out of Control, Overwhelming
"Naturals"
Attack of the mutant rice
America's rice farmers didn't want to grow a genetically engineered
crop. Their customers in Europe did not want to buy it. So how did
it end up in our food? Fortune's Marc Gunther reports.
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
July 2 2007: 3:56 PM EDT
http://cnnmoney.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?
action=cpt&title=Genetically+engineered+rice+gets+into+the+U.S.+food
+supply+-+July+9%2C+2007&expire=-1&urlID=22853548&fb=Y&url=http%3A%
2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2Fmagazines%2Ffortune%2Ffortune_archive%2F2007%
2F07%2F09%2F100122123%2Findex.htm&partnerID=2200
(Fortune Magazine) -- Back in the spring of 2001, a 64-year-old
Texas rice farmer named Jacko Garrett watched a fleet of 18-
wheelers haul away truckloads of rice that he had grown with great
care. "It just bothers me so bad," Garrett said. "I'm sitting here
trying to find food to feed people, and I've got to bury five
million pounds of rice." No one likes to waste food, but for
Garrett, who runs a charity that collects rice for the needy, the
pain was especially acute.
Garrett's rice was genetically modified, part of an experiment that
was brought to an abrupt halt by its sponsor, a North Carolina-
based biotechnology company called Aventis Crop Science. The
company had contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice,
which was known as Liberty Link because its genes had been altered
to resist a weed killer called Liberty, also made by Aventis.
But by 2001, Aventis Crop Science was living a biotech nightmare.
Another one of its creations, a variety of genetically modified
corn known as StarLink, had been discovered in taco shells made by
Kraft. Because the StarLink corn had been approved as animal feed -
and not for human consumption - all hell broke loose.
Hundreds of corn products were recalled. Consumers and farmers
sued. Greenpeace dumped bags of corn in front of federal regulatory
agencies, and an Environmental Protection Agency official accused
Aventis Crop Science of breaking the law. So shell-shocked was
Aventis SA (Charts), the French pharmaceutical giant that owned
Aventis Crop Science, that it decided to sell the U.S. biotech unit
and abandon the very emotional business of reengineering the foods
we eat.
So dumping the Texas rice was a no-brainer. "We didn't want to take
any chances," says a former Aventis executive. "We burned and
buried enough rice to feed 20 million people."
Eventually Aventis paid about $120 million to settle the StarLink
lawsuits. It sold its crop science unit to Bayer (Charts), the
German drug giant that makes aspirin, Aleve and Alka-Seltzer. Bayer
Crop Science dropped plans to bring Liberty Link rice to market,
largely because rice grown in the U.S. is exported to Europe and
other places that don't want genetically modified foods. And
everyone forgot about Jacko Garrett's rice.
Can you guess where this is going? Yep. In January 2006, small
amounts of genetically engineered rice turned up in a shipment that
was tested - we don't know why - by a French customer of Riceland
Foods, a big rice mill based in Stuttgart, Ark. Because no
transgenic rice is grown commercially in the U.S., the people at
Riceland were stunned. At first they figured that the test was a
mistake or that tiny bits of genetically modified corn or soybeans
had somehow gotten mixed up with rice during shipping. They said
nothing.
Then came another shock. Testing revealed that the genetically
modified rice contained a strain of Liberty Link that had not been
approved for human consumption. What's more, trace amounts of the
Liberty Link had mysteriously made their way into the commercial
rice supply in all five of the Southern states where long-grain
rice is grown: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and
Missouri. Bayer and Riceland then informed the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, which announced the contamination last August.
By then the tainted rice was everywhere. If in the past year or so
you or your family ate Uncle Ben's, Rice Krispies, or Gerber's, or
drank a Budweiser - Anheuser-Busch (Charts, Fortune 500) is
America's biggest buyer of rice - you probably ingested a little
bit of Liberty Link, with the unapproved gene. (A very little bit -
perhaps ten to 15 grains of transgenic rice in a one-pound bag of
rice, which contains about 29,000 grains.)
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.
Rice growers were told not to plant Cheniere, a popular seed
variety that had been tainted by Liberty Link genes. Regulators set
up a comprehensive testing program to keep future harvests clean.
Last December, Bruce Knight, a USDA official, assured worried rice
farmers, "The good news is that the only foundation seed to test
positive for Liberty Link was of a single variety - 2003 Cheniere."
And then ... the tests that had been put in place uncovered a
second contamination, and then a third, involving new, unapproved
strains of Liberty Link, which turned up in another popular variety
of rice seed, called Clearfield 131 (CL131). This seed variety is
made by the German chemical giant BASF Corp. So the CL131 seed had
to be banned as well.
Yes, it's the attack of the mutant rice, and it's spreading.
The industry takes a hit
"This is a new kind of pollution," says Andrew Kimbrell, director
of a Washington advocacy group called the Center for Food Safety,
which opposes transgenic food. "You don't see it. It disseminates.
It reproduces. It mutates. It's living pollution."
And here's the thing that really bugs many of America's 8,000 rice
farmers: They didn't want to grow transgenic rice. It's not that
they object to genetic engineering per se; many of them grow
transgenic corn or soybeans alongside their conventional rice. Over
the past decade, in fact, biotech crops have become staples of the
American diet; about 60 to 70 percent of the processed foods in
U.S. grocery stores contains oils or ingredients derived from
biotech corn and soybeans, according to BIO, an industry group.
Nevertheless, an acrimonious debate about whether biotech food is
safe for the environment and human health rages on amid
considerable scientific uncertainty. Absent firm proof of danger,
regulators in the U.S. have chosen to permit widespread
bioengineering. But rice farmers know their market. About half of
the U.S. rice crop, which was worth about $1.9 billion last year,
is exported, and Europeans and Asian consumers simply don't want
genetically engineered food.
"If I can't sell it, I don't want to grow it," says Jennifer James,
who grows rice, wheat and soybeans, some of them transgenic, on a
7,500-acre farm near Newport, Ark.
And so the farmers are hiring lawyers and calling their congressmen
and trying to decide whom to blame: Bayer Crop Science, which owns
Liberty Link and is the target of dozens of lawsuits, or the U.S.
government, which regulates agricultural biotechnology, or the
Europeans, for their opposition to genetically modified crops,
which many farmers suspect is a form of protectionism. (Funny,
isn't it - European consumers won't buy genetically modified food,
but French, Swiss and German drug companies sell biotechnology to
U.S. farmers.)
Some farmers point the finger at environmental groups like
Greenpeace for scaring people with their talk of Frankenfoods. Says
James, who has decided not to sue: "Somebody screwed up somewhere."
Collectively, farmers and seed companies have lost hundreds of
millions of dollars as a result of the contamination. Its origins
remain a mystery. "This is the most traumatic thing I've seen in
the rice industry in 30 years," says Darryl Little, the widely
respected director of the Arkansas State Plant Board, who has tried
to clean up the mess. "It's been devastating."
And not just to the farmers. Consider the plight of Scott Deeter,
the chief executive of a Sacramento biotech firm called Ventria
Bioscience. Ventria wants to grow rice that has been genetically
engineered to produce proteins that can then be extracted and
turned into low-cost treatments for diarrhea. Making the drugs by
growing transgenic rice is cheaper than producing them in a lab.
"The rice plant is just the factory," Deeter says.
Ventria's medicine would save lives, Deeter says. About 1.8 million
children in poor countries die annually from diarrhea. The disease
raises national security issues as well, Deeter told a
congressional subcommittee. "During Operation Iraqi Freedom, 70
percent of deployed troops suffered a diarrheal attack," he
testified. "This is a silent enemy attacking American troops."
Even before the Liberty Link brouhaha, Ventria struggled to find a
home for its "pharma rice." California told the company not to grow
it in the state after farmers objected. So did Missouri, after
Anheuser-Busch threatened to stop buying Missouri rice if Ventria
was allowed to grow there. (AB did not want diarrhea-fighting
proteins to turn up in a Bud.) Last year Deeter took his plans for
rice fields and a production plant to Junction City, a small Kansas
town more than 200 miles away from the nearest rice farm.
That's not far enough to satisfy critics. The USA Rice Federation,
an industry group, opposed Ventria's plans. Citing Liberty Link,
the group said it does not believe that the USDA can protect "the
environment and the public's food and feed supply from unwanted
intrusions of genetically engineered materials."
"We're not anti-biotech, and we're not anti-Ventria," says Bob
Cummings, the federation's senior vice president. "Our job is to
protect our industry."
Farmers fight back
"HAVE A RICE DAY." So says the USA Rice Federation, which wants
people to eat more rice. Check out the recipes on its Web site for
Senegalese peanut soup with spicy rice timbales; walnut rice with
cream cheese, mushrooms and spinach; and chocolate-chip banana nut
rice pudding. Yum.
Alas, these items are not on the menu at the Little Chef restaurant
in Stuttgart, Ark., where Fortune and a group of rice growers
recently discussed the industry's woes over a lunch of chicken-
fried steak, vegetables and you-know-what. Arkansas grows about 45
percent of the nation's rice crop, and America's two biggest rice
mills, Riceland Foods and Producer's Rice Mill, are headquartered
in Stuttgart, a town of 10,000 people that bills itself as the Rice
and Duck Capital of the World. Rice plants and ducks both like water.
Although they can't prove it, the farmers believe that rice prices
are lower than they would be because of the Liberty Link problems.
After the contamination was made public by the USDA on Aug. 18,
2006, the price of rice futures fell by about 10 percent. Prices
have recovered since then, but farmers say they should be higher
given the rising prices for other farm commodities.
Currently, rough (meaning unrefined) rice sells for about $10.70
per hundredweight, or 100 pounds. "Rice could have been $1 a
hundredweight more, and every farmer needs that," says Ray Vester,
who farms about 1,300 acres in Stuttgart and sits on the state
plant board. Rice farmers have been hard hit by rising energy and
fertilizer costs, so they are feeling squeezed.
Farmers who planned to use either Cheniere or CL131 seed had an
additional problem. They had to scramble to find alternatives or
plant other crops. About 40 percent of the rice acreage in Arkansas
would have been planted with either Cheniere or CL131 until both
were banned, according to Chuck Wilson, a rice specialist with the
University of Arkansas cooperative extension service in Stuttgart.
Wilson expects Arkansas growers to plant 1.2 million acres of rice
this year, 13 percent less than last year and the lowest acreage
since 1996.
Hardest hit was a small group of farmers who specialize in growing
rice for seed and were unable to sell their stocks of Cheniere or
CL131 to other farmers. "We had to put seals on the bins. We
couldn't ship it. We couldn't plant it," said Troy Hornbeck, an
owner of HBK Seed in Dewitt, Ark. He was eventually permitted to
sell the transgenic rice for consumption, not for planting, at a loss.
Ten seed dealers from Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana recently
sued Bayer, saying the company's carelessness ruined their seed.
Rival BASF, which lost an estimated $15 million because it owns the
banned Clearfield 131 variety, hasn't said whether it will sue, but
its executives are unhappy. "We can't have an unwanted GM event
floating around the seed supply," said one.
Many other lawsuits have been filed. Tilda, a British importer of
rice, has sued Bayer Crop Science, Riceland Foods and Producer's
Rice Mill, saying it had to destroy or send back Arkansas rice.
A Chicago tort lawyer named Adam Levitt has been named a lead
counsel in a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of more than 400
rice growers. Not by coincidence, Levitt represented corn farmers
who successfully sued Aventis Crop Science, Bayer's predecessor,
over StarLink.
Says Levitt: "Bayer knew Liberty Link rice could easily contaminate
the rice supply, because Bayer contaminated the U.S. corn supply
only a few years ago."
Bayer says the company complied fully with the law. In a legal
filing, its lawyers speculated that the alleged damages were caused
by an "act of God."
What went wrong?
So it's God's fault? That's about as good an answer as we've got
right now to the question of what went wrong.
The USDA's Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has
been investigating since last summer, but the agency won't say what
it has learned. In a sense, APHIS is investigating itself. Its
track record, frankly, is a little scary.
In 2005 the USDA's inspector general said that APHIS, which
regulates field tests of biotech foods, didn't know the location of
some field trials, did no independent testing of nearby crops and
did not even require submission of written protocols by some
biotech firms, leaving the industry to, in effect, monitor itself.
The audit concluded: "APHIS' current regulations, policies and
procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of
agricultural biotechnology." APHIS says it has fixed the problems.
"We regulate technology that's constantly changing, and our
policies continue to evolve," John Turner, an agency official, told
Fortune.
As it turns out, it's unlikely that Jacko Garrett's Texas rice
escaped from the landfill to live another day. He grew a different
variety of Liberty Link from the one that got into the Cheniere
seed. Instead, the source of the contamination is probably a rice
research station in Crowley, La., operated by Louisiana State
University. The LSU fields appear to be among the very few places -
if not the only one - where the Liberty Link rice was grown in
proximity to fields where Cheniere and CL131 seeds were also being
developed.
The LSU rice-breeding station is run by a man named Steve
Linscombe, one of the most admired men in the U.S. rice industry.
Linscombe, who is 52, has devoted his entire career to developing
rice-seed varieties that improve yields and resist pests or
herbicides. "He has put millions of dollars into the pockets of
rice farmers," says Darryl Little, the Arkansas regulator. "He's a
premier breeder."
Because Linscombe understood the risks of mixing transgenic rice
seed with conventional varieties, he took extra precautions when
working with Liberty Link. To prevent pollen or stray kernels of
rice from migrating, USDA rules recommend at least a ten-foot
buffer zone around transgenic field tests. LSU's contract with
Bayer called for a 30-foot isolation zone. Linscombe created buffer
zones of at least 120 feet. Until now, no one thought rice pollen
could travel that far.
"I did as much isolation as I possibly could," Linscombe said. So
what happened? "I have been dealing with this for nine months, and
I still can't give you a definitive answer," he said. Wilson, the
University of Arkansas rice specialist, says, "I think we've
learned some things about rice, biologically, that we didn't know
before."
Whether the USDA has learned is another question. In May the agency
granted Ventria's application to grow its pharma rice on up to
3,200 acres in Kansas. The agency had received 20,000 comments
(most by e-mail clicks) opposing the plan from citizens, activists,
farmers and rice industry groups.
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 ...
From the July 9, 2007 issue
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