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12/17/07 - Rice on Canadian store shelves contaminated

Excerpted from: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2007/17/c3665.html

An independent investigation by Greenpeace has found rice sold in Canadian supermarkets to be contaminated with an experimental, genetically engineered variety accidentally released into the environment. Greenpeace is demanding that all long grain rice imported from the United States be removed from store shelves in Canada after independent testing confirmed that rice purchased at two supermarkets in Vancouver and Montreal was contaminated with a variety of genetically engineered rice not approved for human consumption by Health Canada.

"There are no assurances that this genetically engineered rice is safe for people to eat," said Josh Brandon, agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace. "Even if genetically engineered food was labeled, which it isn't anywhere in Canada, we would not know about the presence of this variety because of lax testing on the part of the authorities."

The rice entered the American food chain sometime after 2001 following field trials at nine sites in Arkansas and Louisiana conducted by Bayer, the German multinational chemical corporation, which designed the rice to tolerate its brand of herbicide. Bayer only disclosed the contamination last year.