Lack of market ends GE roll-out

KANSAS CITY - Monsanto has failed to win a market for its genetically engineered wheat because the product poses too much risk for too many people, wheat industry players said yesterday.

Monsanto, the world leader - and lightning rod - for GE crops and foods, said yesterday that it would shelve plans for Roundup Ready wheat, a biotech variety it had developed over six years and previously said it would launch in the United States and Canada despite anti-GE protests.

Those protesters won the day because of the perception of too many losers and one primary winner: Monsanto.

"We look forward to a day when wheat might have an improved nutritional profile or fewer allergens or an improved milling quality, but [Monsanto's] biotech wheat had none of those components," said Jim Bair, vice-president of the North American Millers' Association, a processing group.

In New Zealand, Monsanto has applied to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to allow its GE wheat to be introduced into the New Zealand food chain.

It made similar applications in Canada, Australia and the United States, but the Greenpeace lobby's Auckland spokesman, Steve Abel, said there was now a question over why Monsanto would continue with the application, when the product involved had effectively been shelved.

"We will be asking why the regulators would continue to spend public money on an application to sell a product which will not be sold in the short to medium term."

Other critics have raised concerns over its environmental impact and the difficulty of segregating GE from conventional wheat varieties.

Wheat has special significance as a staple in the New Zealand diet. It is not just present in foods such as breads, cereals and pastas, but in a wide range of processed foods as a thickener. FSANZ has already approved over 20 other GE crops with further assessments pending.

In North America, Monsanto had promised farmers it would not sell them the wheat seed until it could keep it separate from non-GE wheat and demonstrate it had willing buyers for the product - the reason it was seeking regulatory approvals for the use of GE wheat in food.

North American growers of GE corn, GE soy and GE canola suffered price falls or constraints on sales in some markets which resisted imports of those earlier crops.

Critics said while Monsanto stood to profit not only from the sales of the biotech seed but from sales of its popular Roundup herbicide, which the wheat was designed to withstand, farmers would gain little and consumers, millers and others would gain no value.

For corn and soybeans - grains fed mainly to livestock - Monsanto's Roundup strategy has been a winner with farmers, who are able to combat weeds more efficiently. Biotech corn varieties to fight weeds or insects will be planted in 46 per cent of US corn acreage this year, 86 per cent of soybean acreage, and 76 per cent of cotton acreage.

Monsanto had said its Roundup Ready wheat would bring similar benefits.

But of the 63.6 million tonnes of wheat harvested by US farmers last year, less than a quarter, about 13.6 million tonnes, were hard red spring wheat, the only type that Monsanto had modified to include the Roundup Ready. And not all spring wheat growers said they needed the technology.

Studies showed consumers and food companies around the world were sceptical about embracing biotech in their bread, cereals and crackers.

And based on past experience with food safety issues and product recalls, farmers and food makers could see many risks. In 2000, when a GE corn named Starlink that was notapproved for food use suddenly turned up in food products, farmers and traders and food firms lost millions.

In Canada, it was farmers who first raised concerns about the practical problems with growing a biotech, or GE, crop that cannot be completely kept separate from traditional grain varieties.

Canadian courts are dealing with two cases involving the spread of GE traits to non-GE crops.

- REUTERS