We first circulated this U.S. press piece - 'Rice farmers biggest losers over altered rice, exec says' - just over a week ago, but we've now had time to summarise some of its key points.

The article gives a graphic and revealing picture of just what GM contamination has really meant for U.S. farmers, millers and exporters.

It's a picture that should set alarm bells ringing worldwide whenever GM crop trials are proposed.

Remember: no GM rice has ever been grown commercially in the U.S. There were only ever trials and those trials were completed back in 2001 - some 5 years ago.

So what has the GM contamination discovered 5 years later meant for the industry?

*The U.S. rice industry's worst ever crisis

*41% of U.S. rice exports negatively affected

*More than 25 federal lawsuits filed

*Trade with the 25-nation E.U. at a standstill

*Other countries have banned U.S. long-grain rice imports

*Many other countries requiring testing

*Some markets for medium- and short-grain rice also affected

*The problem involves not just Bayer's (GM) LL601 rice

*Another Bayer GM rice, LL62 has been detected in Europe and in U.S. testing

*32% of nearly 700 long-grain rice samples — including everything from unmilled to parboiled rice — tested positive for GM traits

*GM traits are so prevalent that "you cannot guarantee statistically that you'll ever get rid of them"

*U.S. rice can never again be validly described as "GM-free"

As if all that weren't bad enough, another big headache for U.S. rice farmers as they struggle to eliminate GM contamination, in order to try and regain market share in the future, is the lack of any certainty about the source of the problem.

In August this year, a sample of Cheniere foundation seed grown in 2003 was found to contain a trace amount of LL601. Cheniere is the only seed rice that has tested positive for LL601. However, in the U.S.'s biggest rice growing state of Arkansas only 11-12% of all the rice acres were planted in Cheniere while 31% of Arkansas rice has been testing positive.

In other words, 3 times more rice has been contaminated than one would predict if the Cheniere variety was the sole source of the contamination.

And although Bayer is widely blamed for the multiple problems and the massive losses, so far the ccompany has not stumped up a cent.
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Rice farmers biggest losers over altered rice, exec says
BY NANCY COLE Arkansas Democrat Gazette, November 4 2006
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7233

Roughly 40 percent of U.S. rice exports have been negatively affected by what many experts consider to be their industry's worst crisis, a USA Rice Federation official said Friday.

Speaking in Little Rock to the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board, federation Vice President Bob Cummings discussed the damage caused to the $1.3 billion U.S. rice export market after the U.S. Department of Agriculture's August revelation that traces of an unapproved, genetically engineered rice had been discovered in U.S. long-grain rice supplies.

Keith Glover, president and chief executive officer of Producers Rice Mill Inc. in Stuttgart, said at the meeting that farmers have been some of the biggest losers in this case.

"There's no doubt in my mind you'd be looking at 40 to 50 cents a bushel more for rice today than what it is... and when you look at 210 million bushels in Arkansas, you're talking about an $80 [million ] to $100 million hit," Glover said.

Cummings, who oversees international trade policy for the industry group based near Washington, D.C., said "the federation is not opposed to genetic engineering of rice, because it holds some real benefits to growers."

"However, you need to be able to sell the product that you grow, and you need to make sure that consumers are ready for it and that the U.S. and foreign countries have granted regulatory approval," he said.

Cummings described the federation's draft plan, developed earlier this week in Dallas by a group of 50-60 rice-industry experts, which is intended to "flush genetically engineered rice out of the long-grain system starting with the 2007 crop."

Board members, most of whom are rice farmers, acknowledged the importance of acting swiftly.

"We've got to do something or we're going to have a crop that we can't sell," said board member Marvin Hare, who farms rice near Newport.

Everyone in the rice industry has been bloodied by the loss in export market share, but none more so than farmers, Glover said.

"It's a mess, and the quicker we can clean it up, the faster you guys are going to get the premiums you have developed in the marketplace," he told board members.

The problem is of particular concern in Arkansas because the state produces roughly half of all the rice grown in the United States, and about half of all U.S. rice is exported.

Rice is Arkansas' single most valuable row crop, worth $810 million in 2005.

Since mid-August, more than 25 federal lawsuits have been filed by farmers seeking damage payments from Bayer Crop-Science, whose experimental LLRICE 601 is at the center of the controversy.

Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods Inc. also has been named in two of the lawsuits, which criticize how the cooperative has handled its investigation of the problem since January and allege negligence and fraudulent concealment.

The USDA, which announced discovery of the unapproved rice on Aug. 18, and the Food and Drug Administration have said that no health, food safety or environmental concerns are associated with LLRICE 601 and that "the domestic market is steady to date," Cummings said.

But the picture is far more bleak in export markets.

Trade with the 25-nation Eur