Press Release, March 22 2004
Friends of the Earth Europe
Coalition against BAYER-Dangers (Germany)

EUROPE URGED TO REJECT MODIFIED RICE

Worlds staple food at risk from multinationals

European Governments are being urged to reject a Genetically Modified (GM)
rice in order to protect the world's largest staple food from falling into
the hands of multinational companies.

Member states have only until Sunday 28th March to object to an application
by German-based Bayer Cropscience to import into the EU a GM rice that has
been modified to resist the companies own herbicide, glufosinate ammonium.
It is the first time that a company asks for the authorisation of GM rice in
Europe. Both Friends of the Earth Europe and the German "Coalition against
Bayer Dangers" (CBG) claim that an EU approval of the rice will send a
dangerous signal to developing countries and could lead to the eventual
corporate take-over of one of the worlds most important foods. Currently 2.5
billion people depend on rice as a staple food.

As well as the dangers to the worlds food supply Friends of the Earth and
CBG are concerned that

* Long term studies to examine the potential for more serious health effects
were not carried out

* Feeding studies on broilers conducted by Bayer were judged by the UK
authorities to be of "limited capacity" to identify adverse effects, while
in a pig feeding study a difference in response (increased weight gain) was
observed in pigs who ate the GM rice

* Bayer does not provide any information on the likelihood of imported rice
being spilled and the effects this might be have on the 5 southern EU member
states that currently grow rice (Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal and France).

Geert Ritsema of Friends of the Earth: "This genetically modified rice not
only poses a health risk to European consumers but could also endanger the
livelihoods of millions of people outside the EU. Europe has a strong moral
obligation to take this into account when they assess this rice."

"Allowing the import of GM rice into Europe will give the green light to
multinationals to promote this unsustainable form of farming in developing
countries. Allowing the worlds most important staple food to fall into the
hands of companies like Bayer is a dangerous and unprecedented move."


Philipp Mimkes of CBG: "Agricultural biotechnology has so far been a
complete disaster for Bayer. This application for genetically modified rice
will become another chapter in their book of failures. It's time that Bayer
quit producing genetically engineered food."

Geert Ritsema, GMO campaign coordinator Friends of the Earth Europe, mobile:
+31-6-290 05 908, office: +32-2-542 0182

Philipp Mimkes, Coalition against BAYER-dangers / Germany; +49-(0)211-333
911,  CBGnetwork@aol.com www.CBGnetwork.org (English and German)

Briefing about the food safety and environmental risks of Bayer's GMO rice

Legal requirements

The GMO Directive 2001/18 requires that member states and the Commission
"ensure that all appropriate measures are taken to avoid adverse effects on
human health and the environment which might arise from the deliberate
release or the placing on the market of GMOs"

And recital 11 states that: "Placing on the market also covers import.
Products containing and/or consisting of GMOs covered by this Directive
cannot be imported into the Community if they do not comply with its
provisions."

I think that, at this stage, it will be difficult for us to muster legal
arguments to show that the EU should not 'export' environmental damage by
importing produce from a crop known to damage the environment. For now I
would stick to the moral argument, but I am talking to Pete and Phil about
investigating this further.

Food safety considerations

Friends of the Earth believes that there are several serious concerns about
the safety of LLrice62 for use in human food.

* The genetic analysis of the impact of the inserted genes on the rice
indicated the possibility of an alteration in the plant metabolism as a
result of the genetic modification; at the very least this was not ruled out
by Bayer.

* No examination of the GM rice was done to make sure that unanticipated
changes to its metabolism had not occurred

* Changes were observed in known compositional compounds of rice, including
a substantial increase in the amount of existing allergenic compounds.

* One of the feeding studies conducted by Bayer was judged by the UK
authorities to be of "limited capacity" to identify adverse effects, while
in the other a difference in response (increased weight gain) was observed
for consumption of the GM rice.

* Long term studies to examine potential for more serious health effects
were not carried out.

Taken together, Friends of the Earth considers that the evidence suggests
that unexpected changes could have occurred in the GM rice which could
affect its nutritional value and safety for human consumption.

Rice is a staple food for 2.5 billion people. For many of those people,
including citizens of the EU, it can make up a large proportion of the diet.
The US Government has stated that when assessing GM foods for its own
livestock, regulators should take particular care because "a single plant
product may constitute a significant portion of the animal diet...
Therefore, a change in nutrient or toxicant composition ... may be a very
significant change in the animal diet" (emphasis added)1. If this argument
is valid for US cattle, what about the humans around the world who could end
up eating GM rice as the mainstay of their diet?

The Cartagena Protocol On Biosafety to the Convention On Biological
Diversity notes that there are "limited capabilities of many countries,
particularly developing countries, to cope with the nature and scale of
known and potential risks associated with living modified organisms". The
decisions by the European Union with respect to this GM rice will therefore
be extremely influential in countries with limited resources to undertake
their own regulatory review. The EU authorities must take the assessment of
this rice extremely seriously - and ensure that it is completely safe for
consumption as a large proportion of the diet - because this assessment will
affect people not just in the EU, but around the world.

Environmental impacts

No information on whether GM rice could escape into the EU environment

Bayer's application is for import of the GM rice but not cultivation. Rice
is grown in 5 southern EU member states - Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and
France. Although gene flow to crop rice or weedy red rice is possible in
such areas2,3,4, Bayer said in its application that it considered this risk
to be only 'theoretical', because LLRICE62 is not intended to be grown in
Europe (Page 43 of notification). However, nowhere in its application has
Bayer provided data to show that grains will not be imported into regions
where rice is grown and that it cannot escape. Bayer did not provide any
information on the proportion of imported rice that may contain viable rice
and whether or where spillages of imported rice have occurred in the past.

Environmental impacts in third countries.

One of the key concerns raised by the UK authorities with respect to
herbicide tolerant crops (and the subject of four years of field trials in
the UK) was the impact of the changed herbicide regime on wildlife that
makes use of agricultural areas. In the United States, around half of
natural wetlands have been lost in the last century and rice fields provide
a vital food resource for wetland birds as a result. The weed seeds and
invertebrates of rice fields are known to be important food sources for
wetland birds. If the use of herbicide tolerant rice reduces such
biodiversity, in the same way as has been shown for GM beet crops and spring
oilseed rape in the UK trials, then the production of Liberty link rice in
the US could have serious impacts on wild birds in the United States and
other countries where the crop is grown.

Resistance to the herbicide may develop rapidly.

One of the key weeds that rice farmers need to control is weedy rice.
Liberty Link rice has been promoted in the United States as a means of
controlling weedy rice in particular. However, cultivated and weedy rice are
so closely related that they can easily cross breed. recent research from
China, designed to replicate the occurrence of wild rice in the field, found
transgene escape to wild rice (Oryza rufipogon Griff.) occurring at the rate
of 1.21 and 2.19 % in the field5. A recent study modelling commercial
production of glufosinate tolerant rice in Latin America predicted that the
development of herbicide resistant weedy rice populations would occur within
3 to 8 years6. This will mean that farmers will have to use more herbicides
to control these herbicide resistant weed populations.

Impacts on centres of agricultural biodiversity

Dispersal of transgenes into wild rice, non GM rice and traditional
varieties of rice would be of particular concern in those areas which are
centres of agricultural biodiversity, such as India. The importance of
protecting such world resources cannot be over stated; rice gets its
resistance to two of Asia's four main rice diseases from a single sample of
rice that came from central India7.

1 Guest, G. 1992. Response to FDA Draft Federal Register Notice on Food
Biotechnology
2 OECD (1999) Series on Harmonization of Regulatory Oversight in
Biotechnology No.14. Consensus document on the biology of Oryza sativa
(rice). ENV/JM/MONO(99)26
3 Messegeur, J. et al (2001) Field assessments of gene flow from transgenic
to cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) using a herbicide resistance gene as
tracer marker. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 103: 1151-1159.
4 Zhang, N., Linscombe, S. & Oard, J. (2003) Out-crossing frequency and
genetic analysis of hybrids between transgenic glufosinate
herbicide-resistant rice and the weed, red rice. Euphytica 130: 35-45.
5 Chen LJ et al. (2004) Gene flow from cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) to its
weedy and wild relatives
Annals of Botany 93 (1): 67-73
6 Madsen KH, Valverde BE, Jensen JE (2002) Risk assessment of
herbicide-resistant crops: A Latin American perspective using rice (Oryza
sativa) as a model Weed 16 (1): 215-223
7 World Resources Institute  http://www.wri.org/wri/biodiv/agrigene.html

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