U.S. rice supply contaminated with unapproved rice

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U.S. rice supply contaminated with unapproved rice

In August, the USDA announced that the U.S. rice supply is

contaminated with an unapproved GE rice variety—a discovery made not

by the USDA, but by an export customer. According to Bayer

CropScience, the company that engineered the rice, the unapproved

variety was field tested in the United States in 2000 and 2001. Though

officials assert that the unapproved rice is not a health risk, its

presence in the food supply years after the company stopped field

testing demonstrates that experimental GE crops are not being isolated

from the food supply. The USDA's response to the situation has been to

quickly approve the rice variety, a move that the Union of Concerned

Scientists strongly opposes. Read more about it in The Washington Post.