Thursday, October 12, 2006 Farmers' group wants rice import banned By Victor L. Camion
A FARMERS' group in Negros Oriental urged the Department of Agriculture (DA) to ban rice imports from the US to protect the local rice farmers and safeguard Filipino consumers from the alleged contaminated and genetically engineered rice variety.
The variety of the imported rice is called LibertyLinkRice601 (LLRice601), said Eugene Quirante, regional liaison officer of Centro Saka Inc.
Centro Saka Inc. is a research and policy advocacy and a non-government organization accredited by the National Research Institute of the Department of Agriculture.
Quirante said farmers want the ban imposed after the United States Department of Agriculture found that commercial long grain rice in the US has been contaminated by the unapproved genetically engineered (GE) LLRice601 rice variety.
He said traces of the illegal genetically modified rice have been found in supermarkets in European countries and the United Kingdom.
"As a result, Japan banned all long-grain rice from the US, while the European Union now tests US rice shipments and rejects any rice imports contaminated with LLRice601," said Quirante.
LLRice 601, he said, is a long grain of rice that containing the protein Liberty Link that allows the crop to withstand herbicide applications.
"Imported rice, especially genetically modified (GM) rice from the United States, should be banned from entering our country to prevent contamination of our crops," warned Quirante adding, "If the European countries and the United Kingdom were not spared from the contamination, then we are also at risk from possible contamination since the United States has been dumping their rice into our country through the PL 480 grant!"
He said Centro Saka demands that government impose stricter measures in testing and monitoring shipments of all imported rice from the US and other countries to ensure that local rice varieties and species would be spared from possible contamination.
"The Department of Agriculture should protect our local rice farmers from the risks of GE rice," he said adding, "We should not allow this to happen to our already beleaguered local rice industry."
Quirante stressed that the contamination of GE rice has been causing massive problems for the US rice industry.
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