Rice Industry Troubled by Genetic Contamination

So far, gene escapes have not had discernible effects on human or animal health, leading some proponents to suggest that the real problems are the strict rules in place from the early days of biotech, when safety was a major concern.

"Most of these issues have been issues of regulatory compliance and quality control," said L. Val Giddings, president of PrometheusAB, a Silver Spring-based biotech consulting firm. "These are important, but they aren't safety concerns."

Giddings and some others say it is time for more discriminating standards that would treat many biotech crops as environmentally friendly instead of criminalizing every smidgen of errant DNA.

Others see things differently.

"For years the industry said, 'This will never get out,' " said Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group that has won several legal challenges against the Agriculture Department's handling of biotech crops. "Now it's, 'It will get out, but what does it matter?' We can have a scientific debate about that, but in the meantime it certainly matters a lot economically, because so much of the world doesn't want this stuff."

U.S. farmers such as Zaunbrecher have been caught in the middle, fighting off domestic efforts to introduce gene-altered rice until international markets warm to the product. He was going to plant a conventional variety called Cheniere on at least 500 of his more than 2,000 acres, until he learned that it had become inexplicably tainted with a weedkiller-resistant gene created by Bayer CropScience of Research Triangle Park, N.C., that was unapproved for rice.

In its place, he ordered Clearfield131, another non-engineered variety, developed by BASF of Germany. But on March 5, the USDA put out an emergency call to prevent all planting of that variety. Tests had found two laboratory-made genes not meant to be in it, one belonging to Bayer and one that has yet to be fully identified.

"Everybody's frustrated," said Bobby Hanks, who employs about 100 workers at Louisiana Rice Mill near Crowley. "At this point, the industry has very little confidence in researchers to keep these things out of the food stream."

Cynthia Sagers, a plant ecologist at the University of Arkansas, said USDA rules on how to isolate experimental rice from other varieties have not been stringent enough. Textbooks say rice is a self-pollinating plant, meaning its pollen does not drift far. "But stand in an Arkansas rice field at 11:45 on a sunny day," Sagers said, "and you'll see a zillion billion pollen grains blowing around."

Even if the pollen is contained, accidental mingling of engineered and conventional seeds occurs easily, especially when biotech varieties are not restricted to dedicated equipment and distribution streams.

A string of recent court rulings has revealed regulatory shortcomings for other biotech crops. In August, a federal judge criticized the USDA, saying it had "utter disregard" for the risks posed by plantings of biotech corn and sugar cane that the agency had endorsed in Hawaii. Two rulings in February took the agency to task for not fully considering the risks posed by biotech alfalfa and turf grass.

In the absence of stricter federal rules, some states have taken matters into their own hands. When a company recently sought permission to grow rice endowed with human drug-producing genes in California, officials there said okay -- if the company stayed at least 500 miles from the nearest rice field and waited for a special ruling from the state's Department of Food and Agriculture.