Europes leading food safety agency advised consumers on Friday that eating rice with trace amounts of an unauthorised genetically modified (GMO) strain was unlikely to pose a health risk to humans or animals.

" ... the panel considers that the consumption of imported long grain rice containing trace levels of LL RICE 601 is not likely to pose an imminent safety concern to humans or animals," the European Food Safety Authority said in a statement. But the Parma-based agency said there was insufficient data to provide a full risk assessment, adding that its conclusions were based on available molecular and compositional data and the toxicological profile of a newly introduced protein.

In August, the European Commission tightened requirements on US long-grain rice imports to prove the absence of the LL RICE 601 strain, which it said was marketed by Germanys Bayer AG and produced in the United States. Its decision followed the discovery by US authorities of trace amounts of the GMO rice, engineered to resist a herbicide, in long-grain samples that were targeted for commercial use.

Last week, France and Sweden detected the presence of LL RICE 601 originating in the United States and the same strain was also found within a cargo of US rice being tested in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Tests in Germany have so far proved negative, despite claims by environment group Greenpeace International that the strain had been found in branches of a discount supermarket chain.

At present, no biotech rice is allowed to be grown, sold or marketed in the 25 countries of the European Union. Bayer says it does not sell or produce LL RICE 601 and the strain was developed by Aventis CropScience, a company bought by Bayer in 2002. But that development was discontinued in 2001, the company says.
(Planet Ark, 18/09/2006)