EU, US BATTLE OVER ILLEGAL GM CORN

The European Commission on 15 April voted to introduce emergency measures restricting the import of GM corn feed from the US. The decision requires all imports to be accompanied by an analytical report issued by an accredited laboratory certifying that the import is free of illegal GM corn. The move followed the discovery that approximately 1000 metric tonnes of an unapproved biotech corn strain have been imported from the US into the EU since 2001.

The US Mission to the EU informed the Commission on 22 March that up to 10 kg of the illegal Bt10 corn seeds were shipped from the US by biotechnology firm Syngenta to test sites in Spain and France for "research purposes" and up to 1000 metric tonnes of Bt10 feed products may have entered the EU since 2001. The seed entered the EU through export channels for Bt11, a corn seed that has regulatory approval in both the US and EU unlike Bt10, which does not have approval in either area. Although the US told EU officials at the time that Bt10 and Bt11 were the same, on 31 March Syngenta told the Commission that unlike Bt11, Bt10 contained a gene conferring resistance against the antibiotic ampicillin. Ampicillin is widely prescribed for infections of the middle ear, sinuses, bladder, kidney, meningitis and other infections and it is feared that consumption of Bt10 will lead bacteria in the stomach to pick up the resistance gene and become tolerant to the antibiotic, making it less effective against infections.

Nonetheless, the European Food Safety Authority said in a statement made on 12 April that the illegal corn is unlikely to pose any threat to health or the environment given that a similar strain of Bt-10 examined last year showed that corn of this type is "unlikely to alter the existing pool of bacteria" resistant to ampicillin. Also, research so far has indicated that ampicillin-resistant genes do not spread through pollination from genetically modified corn to normal corn, the Authority noted. Syngenta said that the resistance gene is inactive in Bt10 and played down concerns about antibiotic resistance.

The new EU measure says that given the failure of Syngenta or the US authorities to deliver data requested by the EU for a full safety assessment, "emergency measures" are required "in order to achieve the high level of health protection chosen in the Community". Under the new measures, any company importing GM corn feed or brewers' grains containing GM corn from the US into the EU must only do so if the imports are accompanied by an original analytical report issued by an accredited laboratory certifying that the product does not contain an illegal strain of GM corn. In the absence of such a report -- which is more detailed than existing EU requirements because it requires the approval by an accredited laboratory -- the importing company must either have the corn tested or not place it on the market. It also calls on EU member states to conduct spot checks of their GM corn imports, a process that is waiting on Syngenta's release of the full information about the molecular make-up of Bt10 and its distinction from Bt11, as well as the specific detection method to trace Bt10. It recognises that the measures should be "no more restrictive of trade than is required", and so limits the conditions only to corn feed and brewers' grains given that the US government has provided assurances that no GM corn food is imported into the EU from the US.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth said "this incident exposes an incompetent and complacent industry, an absence of regulation in the United States and a breakdown in Europe's monitoring of food imports. Immediate action is needed at an international level to prevent further contamination in the future." They called for an investigation into how Syngenta was able to sell unapproved GM products in the EU, and criticised the EU's slow reaction. "This is the latest in a long series of contamination events and demonstrates once again that GE crops can't be controlled, even by the companies that develop them", said Doreen Stabinsky, GE campaigner at Greenpeace, adding that the delay in making the release known -- almost four months since the US government entered into talks with Syngenta in December 2004 after four years of trade -- was particularly troubling.

The US criticised the EU measures as being unnecessarily restrictive. "We view the EU's decision to impose a certification requirement on U.S. corn gluten due to the possible, low-level presence of Bt-10 corn to be an over-reaction," said Edward Kemp, spokesman at the US Mission to the EU. "U.S. regulatory authorities have determined there are no hazards to health, safety or the environment related to Bt-10," he said in a statement. "There is no reason to expect any negative impact from the small amounts of Bt-10 corn that may have entered the EU."

Additional Resources

The detection method for Bt-10 and the Recommendation to verify the presence/absence of BT10 maize in samples of maize, as endorsed by the European Network of GMO Laboratories, is available here.

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