- SAN FRANCISCO - Swiss biotechnology
company Syngenta AG said Tuesday it mistakenly sold to farmers an experimental
corn seed genetically engineered to resist bugs that was never approved
by U.S. regulators, bolstering critics' claims that the industry needs
tighter government scrutiny.
-
- Hundreds of tons of the genetically engineered seeds
and resulting corn crop were shipped in the United States and overseas
between 2001 and 2004. Federal investigators said there was no health or
environmental risk because of the seed's similarity to another Syngenta
product already approved for sale and consumption.
-
- "While there are no safety concerns, the regulatory
agencies are conducting investigations to determine the circumstances surrounding
and extent of any violations of relevant laws and regulations," said
Cynthia Bergman, an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman. "The
U.S. government is also communicating with our major trading partners to
ensure they understand there are no food safety or environmental concerns
that could affect trade."
-
- The Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration
are also investigating, and the company faces a fine of up to $500,000,
USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said.
-
- In trading Tuesday, U.S.-traded Syngenta shares fell
39 cents, or 1.8 percent, to close at $21.45 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $13.93 to $23.26.
-
- Biotechnology critics say the fact that hundreds of tons
of unapproved corn were planted in open fields for four years before Syngenta
acknowledged the mistake shows that regulators and the industry can't now
be trusted to keep genetically engineered organisms from contaminating
the food supply.
-
- They also complain that current government regulations
are particularly lax once a genetically engineered crop has been approved
for consumption.
-
- Nearly half the nation's corn approved for market by
the Department of Agriculture is genetically modified, but many consumers
want their groceries to be biotechnology-free, and are willing to pay a
premium for food they trust to be organic.
-
- Syngenta also acknowledged Tuesday that some of the unapproved
corn may have been shipped overseas to countries that allow imports of
either the genetically engineered seed or of products made with the genetically
modified corn.
-
- The United States and the European Union are in a bitter
trade dispute over how strictly to regulate U.S. biotechnology imports.
Syngenta spokeswoman Sarah Hull would not say whether EU countries have
received the unapproved corn.
-
- "Instead of building international confidence in
genetic engineering, the industry continues to shoot itself in the foot,"
said Greg Jaffe, biotech director for the nonprofit Center for Science
in the Public Interest in Washington D.C. "It proves this technology
is hard to control and we have an industry that is not as diligent as we
would like."
-
- The corn in question is spliced with bacteria genes to
resist bugs without the need for pesticides. It differs from Syngenta's
approved seeds only in terms of where the foreign genetic material is placed
in the plant's genome, said Jeff Stein, head of Syngenta's U.S. regulatory
affairs.
-
- Syngenta also did not say where in the United States
the corn was grown, other than to say it sprouted on a total of 37,000
acres in four states - representing less than 1 percent of all U.S. corn.
Still, the mislabeled corn amounted to several hundred tons shipped over
the last four years.
-
- In 2000, the inadvertent planting and distributing of
genetically engineered corn not approved for human consumption - so-called
StarLink - cost the food industry an estimated $1 billion in recalled products.
-
- No recalls for this wrongly shipped corn are planned,
Hull said, because the government has declared the corn poses no health
or environmental risks. But all unapproved plants and seeds Syngenta still
had have been destroyed, she said. She declined to say how much the incident
might cost the company.
-
- Hull said the Swiss-based company discovered the mistake
in mid-December and reported it immediately as required by law to federal
authorities. Syngenta and the USDA said they didn't publicize the situation
because of the ongoing investigation. The science journal Nature first
reported the mishap on its Web site Tuesday.
-
- Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
-
- http://start.earthlink.net/article/top?
|
