Corngate seed supplier admits US bungle

One of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies, Syngenta, has admitted sowing 150sq km of fields in the United States with a genetically engineered corn which had not been approved.

The mistake, which was kept secret by the company and the United States government since late last year, involved seed from the company involved in New Zealand's Corngate controversy. The seed was imported into this country in 2000.

In the latest revelations, hundreds of tonnes of the GE seeds and resulting corn crop were shipped to growers in the United States and overseas between 2001 and 2004.

The mistake, and the fact that the seeds were sold year after year, raises serious questions about how carefully biotechnology firms are controlling their activities, the scientific journal Nature says.

Biotechnology critics said the long time before Syngenta acknowledged the mistake indicated that American regulators and the biotechnology industry could not be trusted to keep un-approved GE organisms from contaminating the food supply.

They also complained that US government regulations were particularly lax once a GE crop had been approved for consumption.

Earlier shipments, in 2000, to New Zealand of 5.6 tonnes of corn seed, supplied by Syngenta, then known as Novartis, triggered the Corngate controversy during the run-up to a general election in 2002. The Novartis corn seed was planted over 178ha at a time when unauthorised imports of GE seed were illegal, but there was no compulsory testing.

Author Nicky Hager claimed shortly before the 2002 general election that the Government had tolerated GE corn seed imports with less than 0.04 per cent contamination in 2000. The Government denied any cover-up.

An exhaustive parliamentary inquiry into the affair unanimously cleared ministers of interfering in the scientific decision about whether corn under scrutiny in late 2000 contained GM material. MPs were split on whether there was a cover-up.

Nature reported yesterday that Syngenta had over the past four years distributed a strain of GE corn that did not have regulatory approval.

The corn was engineered with a gene code from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to act as a pesticide.

Syngenta had approval to sell a variety of the transgenic crop called Bt11, which had been sold for many years in the United States and Europe.

But between 2001 and 2004, Syngenta inadvertently produced and distributed several hundred tonnes of Bt10 corn that had not been approved. It differs from Syngenta's approved seeds in terms of where the foreign genetic material was placed in the plant's genome.

Since the bungle was discovered in late 2004, US government scientists have said the Bt10 corn is safe to eat and poses no environmental threat.

"What makes this somewhat unique is that Bt10 and Bt11 are physically identical and the proteins are identical," said Jeff Stein, head of regulatory affairs at Syngenta in North Carolina.

Sarah Hull, a spokeswoman for the company in Washington said the company promptly reported the mistake to regulators once it was recognised.

But Michael Rodemeyer, director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a think-tank in Washington DC, told Nature that the release reflected the absence of a thorough monitoring system for GE products in the US food chain.

"This will raise questions in the minds of countries that import food from the United States about whether we have adequate controls in place," Mr Rodemeyer said. It would provide ammunition for critics of GE food -- and it might provide incentives for countries to look at non-GE crop cultivars.

- NZPA, HERALD ONLINE STAFF