Biotech Rice Saga Yields Bushel of Questions for Feds

"We believe that our herbicide-tolerant rice would contribute significantly to rice productivity," said company spokesman Greg Coffey, adding that Bayer nevertheless has no immediate plans to market the product.

In a draft environmental assessment released with extraordinary rapidity last month, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which handles biotech crop approvals for the Agriculture Department, announced a "preliminary decision" to approve -- or in agency parlance "deregulate" -- LL601.

Among those favoring approval is the USA Rice Federation, which represents many rice growers. The group has opposed introducing engineered rice to U.S. fields, but it is now more concerned about the European Union's ongoing refusal to buy American long-grain rice laced with LL601.

U.S. approval would not guarantee European acceptance. But it is "the best available response to a major commercial issue," the federation wrote to APHIS.

Many weed experts see the relative risks and benefits differently, however. They agree with APHIS and Bayer that cross-pollination between white rice and red rice is rare, probably occurring less than 1 percent of the time. But multiply that by millions and millions of rice plants, they say -- and then start using Liberty, which by killing conventional red rice will allow the resistant weed to dominate -- and within a few years, huge expanses of the South could be infested with Liberty-resistant red rice.

"Anyone who works with rice and red rice knows it," said Cynthia Sagers, a plant ecologist at the University of Arkansas. "It's going to happen."

The government's environmental assessment contends that farmers can fall back on other herbicides when that occurs, but opponents say that solution is shortsighted. They note that as gene-altered crops have become common -- some 70 varieties have been approved in the past 15 years, many of them engineered to be resistant to various weed killers -- it has become common to find weeds that are immune to two or even three weed killers.

"We have no ability to absolutely contain these things once they're grown outside," said Rene Van Acker, a weed ecologist at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Others are complaining that Bayer's application is effectively a secret document because of the material blacked out as confidential business information.

"It makes the public reliant on the interpretation of the data by Bayer, which is not a disinterested or unbiased party," wrote the Washington-based Center for Food Safety in comments to regulators.

Rebecca Bech, associate deputy administrator for biotechnology regulatory services at APHIS, defended the application, saying it is "fairly typical to have a lot" of redacted proprietary information in biotech crop applications.

But a review of the five most recently released applications submitted by companies, including ones for genetically engineered corn, grass, alfalfa and cotton, shows that four of those five had no such deletions. (The fifth notes that information has been deleted but does not say how many pages.)