That from a new report by the Government Accountability Office on releases of genetically engineered crops that have included releases into the human food chain. Of most concern, those crops have included those bio-engineered to include pesticides. This must be a hotly contested report, because it was provided to the agencies in November but only released Friday afternoon, December 5.
crossposted from unbossed
Here is GAO's list of the six incidents that are known to have happened.
Appendix VII: Six Documented Incidents of Unauthorized Release of GE Crops into the Food and Feed Supply.
StarLink Corn – 2000
The first known unauthorized release of GE crops into the food supply occurred in 2000 and involved a GE corn variety known by its trademark name, StarLink. StarLink was engineered for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance by Aventis CropScience. . . .One study estimated that the StarLink incident resulted in $26 million to $288 million in lost revenue for producers in market year 2000/2001
Prodigene Corn – 2002
Prodigene, a biotechnology company, was responsible for two incidents in 2002 of the unauthorized release of GE corn designed to produce a protein to be used in pig vaccine, according to USDA officials. In the first incident, USDA ordered the company to destroy 155 acres of conventional corn that might have been cross-pollinated by this GE corn. In the second incident, USDA inspectors found a small number of GE corn plants growing among conventional soybeans. USDA ordered Prodigene to remove and destroy them; however, before the company did so, the soybeans were harvested and sent to a grain elevator containing 500,000 bushels of soybeans.
Bt10 Corn – 2004
In 2004, Syngenta, a biotechnology developer, notified EPA that the company inadvertently had distributed corn seed containing an unregistered GE pesticide known as Bt10. . . . [T]he company mislabeled some seed containers and, thus, inadvertently bred [and sold some of this product].
Liberty Link Rice 601 and 604 – 2006
In July 2006, another biotechnology developer, Bayer CropScience (Bayer), informed USDA that it had detected regulated genetic material in a variety of conventional long-grain rice known as Cheniere. USDA launched an investigation in August that identified the regulated material as LLRICE 601, a GE rice variety that Bayer engineered to tolerate its Liberty Link brand of herbicide. USDA investigators determined that LLRICE 601 and Cheniere had been grown at a research facility affiliated with Louisiana State University between 1999 and 2001. However, they were unable to determine conclusively that the commingling of GE and non-GE seeds, or cross-pollination took place at this facility.
Event 32 Corn – 2006
In February 2008, USDA, EPA, and FDA issued a joint public statement announcing that Dow AgroScience (Dow), a biotechnology developer, had discovered low levels of a regulated GE corn seed, called Event 32, in three lines of commercially available GE corn seed sold under the brand name Herculex. Dow engineered Event 32 to produce a pesticidal substance. According to Dow, approximately 72,000 acres were planted with corn seed containing low levels of Event 32 in 2006 and 2007. Dow’s investigation of this incident concluded that the mixing of Event 32 and Herculex seed probably occurred at a single research testing field. As of August 2008, USDA’s investigation was still ongoing.
GAO: "it is likely that such incidents will occur again"
Unauthorized releases of GE crops into food, animal feed, or the environment beyond farm fields have occurred, and it is likely that such incidents will occur again. While there is no evidence that the six known releases into the food or feed supply or into crops meant for the food or feed supply affected human or animal health, some resulted in lost trade opportunities. Moreover, the total number of unauthorized releases into the environment is unknown.
So what is to be done?
Here is a large section from the GAO analysis:
After two decades of experience with field trials, it is widely acknowledged that unauthorized releases of regulated material from field trial sites are likely to occur in the future, and, accordingly, releases are one area of the Coordinated Framework that has been reviewed and modernized in recent years. While the OSTP’s 2002 policy document outlines important first steps for agencies to take to address the likelihood of the low-level presence of regulated genetic material in the environment or food supply and to mitigate any potential economic, environmental, or human health consequences, there are two areas where the agencies could improve their implementation of these proposals, as follows.
• First, FDA has yet to make publicly available, as was initially intended, the results of its early food safety evaluations of novel proteins engineered into plants. In the absence of timely information about the actual risks to human health and the environment presented by a GE crop in the field trial stage, FDA may be missing an opportunity to mitigate the impacts of unauthorized releases, enhance the agency’s credibility, and improve public confidence.
• Second, USDA and FDA have not taken steps to fully leverage their resources to address food safety issues for certain GE crops at the field trial stage. While the agencies have acted to implement the proposals in OSTP’s 2002 policy document to address field trials of GE crops, a lack of coordination of key information among the agencies may prevent them from making the most effective use of their resources. Specifically, the agencies do not have a formal mechanism for sharing information that could enhance their oversight of GE crops in the field trial stage that contain new proteins and that, if released into the food supply, could cause health concerns. FDA currently relies on crop developers to voluntarily notify the agency that they are engaged in field trials of a plant that might benefit from an early food safety evaluation. Because USDA, the federal agency that reviews all applications for field trials of GE crops, does not have a formal mechanism to alert FDA to field trials of such plants, FDA is less likely to be aware of developers’ activities and to encourage them to participate in an evaluation. At the same time, without a formal mechanism for sharing the results of FDA’s evaluations, USDA may lack important food safety information that it could use when making risk determinations for field trials of GE crops and when setting confinement and remediation measures.
To date, government oversight of GE crops has largely focused on assessing and preventing risks posed by GE crops in the testing phase, assuming that after GE crops enter commercial production, the need to oversee them diminishes. However, as the volume and variety of GE crops being grown increases, many stakeholders, including the National Research Council and the National Science and Technology Council, are becoming concerned that widespread use of GE crops can have unintended consequences that should be monitored. The consequences could include negative effects on the environment, non-GE segments of agriculture, or food safety. Among the practices we have identified as important to enhancing collaboration among agencies is developing mechanisms to monitor, evaluate, and report on the results of agency decisions. Such mechanisms should be applied to decisions that lead to the commercial use of GE crops. However, such a monitoring program should be based on risk. Not all GE crops that are marketed may warrant monitoring, and the duration of monitoring may not need to be indefinite.
Recommendations for Executive Action
[W]e recommend that the FDA Commissioner fulfill the agency’s commitment to post the results of completed early food safety evaluations on its Web site and add the results of future evaluations within 120 days of receiving the submission from the plant developer.
To reduce the risk and impact of unauthorized releases, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture and the FDA Commissioner develop a formal agreement to share information concerning GE crops with novel genetic traits that, if unintentionally released into the food or feed supply, present or are likely to present public health concerns and, as a result, also could have negative financial consequences for the food and agriculture industry. With information from USDA about permits or notifications for field trials of such GE crops, FDA could identify which GE crops might benefit from an early food safety evaluation and encourage the developers of those crops to participate in evaluations. With assistance from FDA, USDA could make meaningful and transparent use of the health evaluation data available through FDA’s early food safety evaluations in its risk assessment of GE crops.
To help ensure that unintended consequences arising from the marketing of GE crops are detected and minimized, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture, the EPA Administrator, and the FDA Commissioner develop a coordinated strategy for monitoring marketed GE crops and use the results to inform their oversight of these crops. Such a strategy should adopt a risk-based approach to identify the types of marketed GE crops that warrant monitoring, such as those with the greatest potential for affecting the environment or non-GE segments of agriculture, or those that might threaten food safety through the unintentional introduction of pharmaceutical or industrial compounds into the food supply. The strategy should also identify criteria for determining when monitoring is no longer needed. In developing a strategy, the agencies should draw upon the analysis and conclusions of the National Research Council and the National Science and Technology Council.
The report is Genetically Engineered Crops: Agencies Are Proposing Changes to Improve Oversight, but Could Take Additional Steps to Enhance Coordination and Monitoring GAO-09-60, November 5, 2008