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China Business Weekly staff
Xia Guoyuan, a 40-year old farmer in Xiaguanyuan Town in Hubei Province's Xiantao City, feels satisfied with his rice harvest. He was selected last year to plant genetically modified (GM) rice, able to resist pests in scientists' trial programmes, last year. Xia has now saved about 80 per cent of the pesticides.
"The output of the new (GM) rice strain is similar to those of traditional varieties, but for each mu (0.065 hectares) of new GM rice, I can save up to 80 yuan (US$9.66) in pesticide and labour costs, which are about 30 per cent of my total costs," Xia said.
All the GM rice harvested on Xia's farm was bought by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) for research.
"Many fellow villagers envy me because I was selected to plant the trial field of GM rice. If the government approves the planting of GM rice, I will offer my skills to them," Xia said.
Xia is totally unaware of the escalating debate on whether to commercialize GM rice between scientists and environmental groups since last December when the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) announced it had officially launched the safety evaluation of GM rice.
So far, GM rice has not been commercialized worldwide.
According to Fang Xiangdong, director of MOA's Office of Biosafety, a biosafety committee under the MOA is assessing the biosafety of three pest-resistant Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) rice strains and another rice strain able to resist bacterial blight. The official biosafety certificates are likely to be released early this year and then the GM rice strains must undergo up to two years of field studies before proceeding to commercialization.
Huang Jikun, director of the Agricultural Research Centre under CAS who has long been close to the MOA, said last week that the ministry is very likely to ratify the commercialization of GM rice within the year.
"In fact, many necessary experiments concerning the biosafety certificates have been previously completed and the results have been reported to the MOA. This can save time and speed up the ratification process of GM rice," Huang said.
Bt rice transplants insect-resistant genes from bacteria to rice so the crop is able to resist stem borer, a major pest for rice.
The Chinese Government approved commercialization of genetically modified cotton, tomato, pimiento and a species of morning glory in the late 1990s.
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By Vicki Viotti Advertiser Staff Writer
Growth in genetically engineered crops, along with mounting public concern over possible risks, is expected to renew debate on the subject at the state Capitol this session.
Among them is state Sen. Gary Hooser, D-7th (Kaua'i, Ni'ihau), who is vice chairman of the Water, Land & Agriculture Committee. Hooser plans to submit measures by Thursday's deadline that would make public information about genetically engineered crop production more available.
The bill also would ban the production of certain test crops in the open air, an effort to reduce the risk of contaminating crops in neighboring fields.
A public forum yesterday showed concern among environmentalists and Native Hawaiian advocates about the expansion of an industry that, they argued, receives too little government scrutiny.
The forum was sponsored by Kahea: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, which will host a repeat session at 7 p.m. Saturday at the University of Hawai'i Center for Hawaiian Studies. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are produced by researchers trying to create more disease-resistant strains or, in some cases, producing pharmaceutical and industrial compounds in the plants that can be harvested and marketed.
Native Hawaiians are especially concerned about efforts to produce genetically modified strains of taro, said Le'a Kanehe, a native rights attorney. Very little research is done on the health risks of consuming such plants, she said.
"All the money is going toward the production of GMOs, and not toward evaluating that risk," she said.
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Donors and will have an impact on efforts to provide hundreds of thousands of hungry people with food aid, a UN official said on Tuesday.
The ban allows GM food aid imports but those coming in the form of grains or seeds must be milled upon their arrival and before distribution to beneficiaries, state media said.
Prior to the ban, large amounts of Angola's maize food aid was distributed unmilled.
"Some donors have already expressed their intention to reduce donations (since the ban) because of the extra costs the milling would imply," World Food Programme spokesman Cristovao Simao said.
Nearly three years since a 27-year civil war ended in April 2002, some 900 000 Angolans still rely on WFP handouts for their survival - rations that are now threatened, he said.
The United States, the WFP's biggest food aid donor, had already reduced its donations, Simao said. The US had planned to donate 19 000 tonnes of US maize to Angola when the intention to introduce the ban was announced in early 2004, but had then reduced this to just 14 000 tonnes of sorghum.
Donor countries could still donate non-GMOs, milled GM maize meal or cash, allowing WFP to then buy non-GM produce in Angola and nearby countries in the region such as South Africa and Zambia, Simao said. There was enough stockpiled food aid to last until March, he said.
Some other countries in the region, including Zimbabwe, have banned genetically modified maize from entering the country but allow maize meal made from GM crops.
Leading regional producer South Africa does grow genetically modified maize - designed to be hardier than naturally occurring crops - but pockets of the country remain GM free.
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OTTAWA (CP) - The vast majority of Canadians remain deeply suspicious of biotech food even though they have been consuming it for years with no evidence of adverse health effects.
Roughly 90 per cent of people surveyed for Health Canada last year said they were concerned about the long-term risks of GM (genetically modified) food products. "Almost all Canadians (92 per cent) indicate some level of concern with the long-term risks these products might cause for human health," says a commentary by Pollara Inc., the public opinion research firm that did the survey.
Yet Health Canada has not received a single report of harm from more than 40 GM products approved in recent years, including canola, soybeans, corn, rice and sunflowers.
"There is no evidence showing that any of them have triggered any adverse health effects," William Yan, a scientist with the department, said in an interview Wednesday.
The Pollara study was based on interviews with a random sample of 1,430 Canadians in March 2004.
The main health concern is that proteins created by genetic modification could contain allergens but GM products are carefully screened for allergenicity, said Yan.
The biggest biotech crops in Canada are canola, corn and soybeans. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the food on supermarket shelves may contain GM ingredients.
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CHARLOTTETOWN (CP) -- Hearings on whether Prince Edward Island should ban the use of genetically modified organisms in its agriculture industry has international experts on both sides of the debate digging in for a fight.
Requests to participate are coming in from as far away as California, mainly from the well-organized anti-GMO lobby, which regards genetically engineered food and crops as "Frankenfood.''
Nadege Adam, a spokeswoman for the Council of Canadians, says the public hearings next month could make the island an international trendsetter.
She says if the island goes ahead with a GMO ban, it will put the province ahead of the pack when it comes to responding to public concerns about genetically altered foods.
"What we have here is a very unpopular product,'' she says.
"Around the world, more and more countries are either closing their doors altogether to GMO foods, or they are putting in strict restrictions. So P.E.I., because it is an island, would have the advantage of being able to provide for this fast-growing niche market.''
But the provincial legislature's agriculture committee is taking a cautious approach, stressing that the hearings are meant only to provide insight into the science of genetic engineering.
The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture plans to make a presentation urging careful consideration of all the facts in the GMO debate.
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Divisions in Europe over allowing imports of genetically modified food ingredients clearly in evidence earlier this week when an EU regulatory committee postponed a vote on the entry of a Monsanto crop.
The herbicide-resistant maize, known as GA21, is designed for use as an ingredient in food processing, not for growing.
EU food safety experts had gathered to vote on whether the crop should be cleared for use in the member states. But officials said that the vote was cancelled, pending further scientific data.
Monsanto's GA21 maize line has, in previous years, already received a favourable opinion from the now defunct Scientific Committee on Food, whose responsibilities now come under the European Food Safety Authority.
Facing the fury of anti-GM campaigners, early last year the European Commission broke the de facto moratorium on GM foods, and pushed through approval for a GM sweetcorn supplied by Swiss biotech firm Syngenta to enter the food chain. The first approval of a GM foodstuff since 1998.
While consumer groups complained that Brussels was caving into pressure from the US, the main global exporter of GM crops, the Commission argued that tough new rules on traceability and labelling of GM foodstuffs had cleared the way for the re-launch of approvals.
But EU states are divided. The Commission has, to date, asked EU members nine times to vote on authorising a GMO food or feed product. In eight cases, there was no agreement and in the ninth, the deadlock around the table resulted in the vote being postponed.
Last month, European environment ministers failed to back a proposal to bring a GM food crop designed by US biotech giant Monsanto onto the EU market.
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