On Wednesday, almost 150 U.S food groups and farm businesses and organizations stated their claim to the U.S Department of Agriculture in order to reinforce its supervision of field-testing of genetically modified crops. According to a reliable source, the group includes representatives of natural and organic food industry, trade policy members and family farm.
The group claimed to make the change in GMO field trial regulations after discovering that in this spring Monsanto Co. growing a disapproved genetically wheat in Oregon that caused great disorder in international market.
The Rural Advancement Foundation International and Organic Seed Alliance stated that one of the greatest weakness of the USDA‘s supervision of experimental food trials includes the way unconstitutional crops are grown in the nation.
According to the group, present policy of the USA does not hold any strong and compulsory corruption preventing steps as well as proper system for supervise the success of containment the existing trials.
It is informed that in the last week, the group arranged a meeting with Tom Vilsack, the secretary of the USDA in order to discuss their concern on the matter. In July, they sent a letter to him requesting USDA to modify the regulations so that supervision should be started in the field trial stage.
Courtney Rowe, spokesperson of USDA mentioned the meeting as fruitful. She stated that presently they are reviewing the status and information provided to them the respective authority. They would respond to the information immediately after completing the essential review.
However, USDA informed in earlier this month that supervision of genetically modified crop field trials gas been modified in past few years. To prove their point, they stated that they usually conduct more than 700 inspections yearly that did not exceed 500 still 2007. Moreover, they have improved the training procedure for supervising the success of test protocols.
It is evident that food trials controls focus their interest on wheat producers as they come to know that the unauthorized wheat of Monsanto encouraged numerous buyers, especially the foreign buyers to refuse certain varieties of wheat temporarily. According to many foreign buyers, they refuse to receive biotech crop for several years. They also express their concern that the genetically modified wheat may affect supply of commercial wheat to a large extent.
Interestingly, Monsanto stated that they ended their experiment with the disputed wheat in 2004 and 2005. They further added that they do not have the least idea about how the wheat comes into process in Oregon. On the other hand, USDA explained that the regarded the incident as isolated and assured the wheat buyers that there is hardly any chance of corruption in commercial wheat supply.
However, it is informed that numerous producers charged Monsanto for negligence and USDA reported that they are investigating the unpleasant incident. However, the group wanted strict control demand that the government should prevent any new approvals of GMO wheat field trials until the investigation of Oregon incident is finished.
Moreover, there are other incidents also that accuse the experimental genetically modified crops. In 2006 and 2007, presence of unauthorized biotech crops were evident. Moreover, Bayer AG generated genetically modified rice in order to prevent herbicide led European Union and Japan banned US rice in their country.
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