GM Hypocrisy

Apparently, Chinese GM crops are less scary to Europeans than are U.S. commodities. In Austria, authorities have found rice that came from China that tested positive for Bt63, which is an unapproved rice line just as is LL601 (see September’s Chemically Speaking). Most of the time, initial findings of adventitious presence of genetic material are announced by groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE), which spend their resources collecting foodstuffs throughout the world and testing them.
When these groups notified European governmental organizations about the LL601 presence, multiple EU countries issued “rapid alerts” to notify stakeholders about the situation. For the LL601 rice, the USDA provided safety data and is actively seeking registration for this trait in rice. However, for the Chinese rice, the European Food Safety Authority has not been asked to conduct a risk assessment and the European Commission has not received any data on the rice from Chinese authorities as of mid-September.
Ironically, a FOE spokesman stated that the commission had acted quickly when informed of the possible contamination of LL601 from the U.S. in August, even though at that point it did not know if the rice variety was in the food chain. By contrast, FOE had proved the illegal Chinese rice was already on sale in Europe. (Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News, 10/2/06).