GM canola found in Australian consignment to Japan

Routine tests by the Australian Barley Board have detected traces of genetically modified canola seed in a small consignment canola to Japan, triggering a strong reaction from anti-GM activist organisations.

Bayer CropScience's general manager, bioscience, Susie O'Neill, issued a press release yesterday confirming the detection, and saying it involved an early Bayer herbicide-tolerant variety, Topas 19/2, that the company had tested in Victoria under the jurisdiction of the former Gene Technology Advisory Committee (GMAC), before the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator was established in 2001.

The ABB tests detected GM canola at a level below 0.1 per cent. It will not affect sales of non-GM canola to Japan, Australia's largest customer, because Japan is also the world's biggest importer of Canadian GM canola.

The Gene Technology Regulator, Dr Sue Meek, issued a press release yesterday stating Topas 19/2 had been comprehensively assessed by both the OGTR and Food Standards Australia-New Zealand (FSANZ) and approved for human consumption and commercial release.

Meek said there were a number of ways in which the genetic material could have been inarvertently incorporated into conventional canola varieties -- but trials conducted under OGTR jurisdiction "do not seem a likely source".

She said her office was providing technical assistance to the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, to determine how and when the situation had arisen.

"The most important message is that this genetifc modification has been thoroughly assessed and approved for unrestricted release, as it does not pose risks to human health and safety, or the Australian Environment," Meek said.

But veteran anti-GM campaigner Bob Phelps, of the Australian GeneEthics Network, condemned the contamination, saying it had been detected only because of Japan's insistence on testing the Victorian-sourced shipment for contamination by foreign genes.

"Zero detectable GE contamination must be our standard," Phelps said.

At 0.1 per cent, the level of contamination was well below even the arbitrary 1 per cent maximum for adventitious GM contamination set by the European Union, which has the world's most stringent GM-contamination standards.

It is also well below the 0.9 per cent standard for traces of GM contamination in non-GM canola, set by the Australian Seeds Federation and the Australian Oilseeds Federation.

But Julie Newman, national spokesperson for rural anti-GM watchdog, the Network of Concerned Farmers, said farmers were "outratged" at the report.

"We don't want liability for a product we do not want and do not need, yet farmers sign guarantees that we have no GM in our produce" she explained. "Liability should be on Bayer Cropscience's shoulders, not on farmers."

Newman said the Australian Oilseeds Federation is pushing for tolerance levels where some adventitious presence of GM is permitted, but markets and supply chains were demanding guarantees that there was no GM in Australia's produce.

She said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had stated there must be no trace of GM canola in the shipment to qualify for the description of "non-GM" or "GM-free".

She said the NCF was seeing immediate legislative protection to ensure farmers could claim compensation if their incomes were adversely affected."

But Dr Rick Roush, a former GMAC scientific committee member, now a GM commentator with the University of California, Davis, said the contamination issue was not a human health, food safety or environmental issue, because the OGTR had approved the GM variety's use in Australia, and it was also approved in international markets including China, the EU and Japan.

All Australian canola-growing states currently have moratoriums on the commercial release of GM herbicide-tolerant varieties, including Bayer's Liberty Link cultivars, and Monsanto's Roundup Ready cultivars.

However, Bayer has continued with trial plantings of its Liberty Link cultivars, which are tolerant of the herbicide glufosinate ammonium, in several states, including Victoria.

Roush said both the OGTR and Food Standards Australia-New Zealand had approved the safety of Bayer's GM canolas for humans, animals and the environment. They have been "eagerly adopted" by growers in countries such as Canada and the US.

The Topas 19/2 cultivar was an early variety, containing the pat (phosphinothricin acetyl transferase), from the soil bacterium Streptomyces viridochromogenes.

Like Bayer's later varieties, it confers resistance to glufosinate amminium herbicide, but Bayer subsequently switched to the more efficient bar (bialophos resistance) gene in all its Australian-developed cultivars.

Some bar cultivars have been commercialised in North America, and remain approved for Australia.