China committee not recommending GMO rice

By Nao Nakanishi

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A Chinese government committee has
failed to reach a consensus on the safety of genetically
modified rice, putting off the world’s first large-scale
production of the transgenic grain for human consumption.

Committee members told Reuters on Monday the biosafety
committee was asking for more data to prove the safety of
genetically modified (GMO) rice before recommending that
Beijing approve its use.

“There has been no safety agreement for commercial
release,” said Lu Baorong of Shanghai Fudan University, who is
one of 74 members of the committee, which comes under the
ministry of agriculture.

“Next year, if they provide sufficient safety information,
we will assess again,” said Lu, also a deputy director at the
Institute of Biodiversity Science.

An official from the agriculture ministry’s GMO office
declined to give details of the three-day meeting that ended on
Friday, saying that it was collecting expert views on GMO rice.

Activists and scientists have said China, the world’s top
rice consumer and producer, is reining in plans to introduce
GMO rice as concerns mount over safety.

NEW COMMITTEE, TRADE CONCERNS

The government has added more food and environment safety
experts to the new committee, which they said had made it more
difficult to reach a consensus on GMO rice.

Beijing was caught off guard in April when environment
group Greenpeace said unapproved GMO rice was on sale in
markets in the central province of Hubei, one of China’s major
rice producers.

Greenpeace also reported sales in the southern province of
Guangdong in June.

Early this year China, already the world’s largest grower
of insect resistant GMO cotton, looked set to approve
commercialization of a GMO rice known as Xa21 that includes a
gene from an African wild rice.

Yet Beijing has not given the green light to the disease
resistant Xa21 rice.

China has been conducting field trials on four varieties of
GMO rice, including Bt rice, which has a gene that makes it
toxic to pests, the insect resistant CpTI and Bt/CpTI rice.

“We are just waiting,” said Jia Shirong, a professor from
the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, whose
team had applied for the commercial release of Xa21 rice after
more than eight years of study and field trials.

“We have submitted additional data…Whether it will be
approved for commercialization depends on the government. I
don’t know when it will happen,” the professor told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Niu Shuping in Beijing)