www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

China, the world's biggest rice producer and consumer, has further delayed
the introduction of genetically modified rice amid growing concerns about
biosafety, December 2006 by Dominique Patton.

Chinese authorities approved several varieties of GM rice for human
consumption in early 2005 but they never cleared the rice for licencing to
farmers. Further discussion by the country's biosafety committee last month
has brought no further progress in commercializing the crops.

At its bi-annual meeting, the committee sent back Bt rice for more testing,
one of its members, Lu Baorong from Shanghai Fudan University, told Reuters.

Scientists say that the country is under growing pressure from the
international community to safeguard biosafety. The latest decision to carry
out further safety tests on GM rice follows a move by Europe to step up
safeguards against US rice after it exported a shipment contaminated by a GM
variety this summer.

Neighbouring rice producers in Thailand and Vietnam have made public
statements to reassure Europe of their non-GM status while Greenpeace
continues to report on contamination of rice around the world with the GM
variety from the US.

Yet most scientists involved in China's GM research still expect the country
to introduce GM rice once it has carried out further testing. China, with
the world's largest population, and only 6 per cent of its arable land,
needs to boost its food security. Biotechnology promises higher yields from
crops that are fighting with urbanization for space.

Xue Dayuan, responsible for the Chinese delegation to the UN's biosafety
protocol, said there will be increasing funding allocated to GM research in
coming years.

?The Chinese government is getting richer so you can be sure that there will
be more funding for all kinds of crops ? rice, rapeseed, soy, wheat and
corn,? he told AP-Foodtechnology.com.

He said further safety testing could see the Bt rice, which contains a
bacterial gene toxic to pests, being commercialized in two year's time.

If it did, it would be the first country in the world to produce GMO rice,
and the first to grow a GM crop largely consumed by humans. Other GM crops
like soy are often first fed to animals. This is another factor thought to
have led to China's cautious approach.

"China does not want to be the first. Should something go wrong, it has to
take the responsibility," Chuk Ng, food scientist and managing director of
Nutrogen (Dalian) Ltd., a specialist in organic food and food testing, told
Reuters.

In regulatory management and risk assessment experience, China is far behind
foreign countries, like Europe or America .... The government is aware of
this," he said.

Recent food safety problems have underlined weaknesses in China's risk
management. In the last month, Beijing has had to remove eggs containing the
carcinogenic dye Sudan Red from supermarkets, halt the sale of fish
contaminated with chemicals and stop production of glass noodles made with
an industrial bleach.

Professor Xue says that China has increased its investment in biosafety,
spending up to CNY100million on biosafety related to GM crops to date. New
GM research projects are likely to see further spending in this area as
China responds to the concerns of the EU, its biggest trading partner.

?The government is under international pressure from NGOs and European
countries. New projects will certainly include more biosafety research,? he
said.

[www.ap-foodtechnology.com]

------------------------------------------
Posted to Phorum via PhorumMail