American Seed Trade Association

Wants Standards to Allow Small Amounts of GMOs in "GMO-Free" Seed Bags

The Agribusiness Examiner # 98 30nov00
 Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective
A.V. Krebs Editor\Publisher

Maintaining that with genetically engineered crops now being "widely grown," it is virtually impossible to ensure that a bag of non-GE seeds does not have a few genetically engineered ones mixed in, the American Seed Trade Association and its corporate members are renewing efforts to establish standards that would allow a small amount of genetically engineered material in bags of seeds and still have those seeds considered free of modification.

Insisting on absolute purity, the Trade Association says, would bog down the world seed trade.

"Ultimately, we're looking to prevent potential disruption in seed trade as a result of the presence of genetically enhanced material," Angela Dansby, a spokeswoman for the trade group, which represents seed producers and distributors, told the New York Times Andrew Pollack.

The seed group wants that level set at one percent. It and counterparts in several other countries like Canada, Australia and Argentina, hope to test out this level in an experiment, Dansby said. But the European Union has been pushing for a lower, stricter standard closer to 0.5 percent. Europeans have been alarmed by some cases this year in which genetically modified seeds were planted by farmers who thought they were growing non modified crops.

USDA representatives at a recent meeting were noncommittal on the seed industry proposal. At that meeting the Seed Trade Association urged the establishment of the aforementioned  tolerance levels, their request coming after last week's discovery that the telltale protein from the genetically engineered StarLink corn was also found in some seed corn not sold as StarLink.

While the reason for that contamination is not known, one possibility, Pollack reports, is there could have been a mix-up in seed handling at the Garst Seed Company, which produced both StarLink seeds and the seed containing the StarLink protein, which has been approved for animal use but not human consumption because of  concerns it could cause allergic reactions Cross-pollination of one crop by the other is another possibility.