Brussels, 23/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - On Monday evening, the EU was poised to strengthen its control procedures on American long grain rice in order to prevent batches of rice containing banned GMOs from entering the Community market again. At the time of going to press, the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health was looking at the proposal aimed at compelling Member State control authorities to carry out counter-testing to verify the reliability of American tests and thus ensure that rice from the United States is well and truly exempt of the genetically engineered rice, LL Rice 601, manufactured by Bayer. Commission experts expected the decision to be taken during the evening.
Counter-analysis should be carried out at EU entry points and the resulting costs should be borne by the American exporters. The Commission had announced its intention to submit such a proposal to the vote of Member State chief veterinarians after talks between the EU and the USA had stalled over a joint memorandum of understanding for the sampling and testing of American rice (EUROPE 9290). The current legislation (adopted two months ago) - making it an obligation for American exporters to certify that their long grain rice deliveries to Europe are free of LL Rice 601 - has not been able to prevent incidents of this kind. Two batches of American rice, although they had been certified free of LL Rice 601 and were authorised to enter the European market, proved in reality to be contaminated by the illegal GMO during a counter-expertise carried out by Dutch authorities. Both batches were part of a 20,000 tonne cargo of American rice blocked at the end of August in the port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. The Commission specifies that, since September, no cargo of American rice is set to enter Europe. Counter-expertise must detect not only LL Rice 601 but also LL Rice 62, another GMO that not authorised in the EU but which has nonetheless been detected by the French authorities. (lc)