An official review of last year's GM contamination incident, where illegal GM rice from the United States entered the food chain in the UK, is to be held on Thursday 29^th November by the Food Standards Agency. The public and stakeholders are being invited to contribute to the review by the 19^th of November [1].

The FSA review of the of the GM rice (LLRICE601) incident comes eight months after Friends of the Earth took the Agency to Judicial Review over its inadequate response to the contamination [2]. The Judge ruled that although the FSA had not acted illegally, it had made a number of mistakes in its handling of the incident, including a decision not to issue a food alert and providing extremely delayed advice to Local Authorities. [3] At the time the FSA promised to hold a comprehensive review of the incident.

Friends of the Earth Food Campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran said:

"The FSA response, to what was the most serious GM contamination incident in Britain, was entirely inadequate. We now need a thorough investigation to discover what went wrong and how UK consumers can be protected from illegal GM food in the future. The FSA must use this review to put in place new measures to ensure that incidents like this do not happen again. The conduct of the review will reflect the seriousness with which the FSA views this incident and the risks associated with GM in general"

Friends of the Earth is urging the FSA to:

On 18 August last year, the US Department of Agriculture announced that an illegal GM rice strain, unapproved for human consumption, had contaminated long grain rice supplies destined for export. EU authorities were informed only in mid August and immediately put in place Emergency legal measures to deal with the incident. [4]

In its response, the FSA initially announced there were no public safety issues [5] associated with the LL601. It only revised its advice following an opinion by the European Food Safety Authority, which acknowledged that they were unable to say whether the rice was safe to eat. Minutes of private meetings between the food industry and FSA showed that the FSA were advising companies that it did not "expect contaminated products already in the food supply chain to be removed from sale" and "does not expect companies to trace products and remove them from sale' [6].

Stakeholders are invited to attend the meeting by notifying the FSA by Monday 19 November by emailing GMconsult@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk or by calling 020 7276 8566.

[1] See FSA website announcement http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2007/nov/gmrice

[2] Friends of the Earth press release `Food Standard Agency faces High Court challenge over illegal GM rice' Feb 16 2007 http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/food_standards_agency_face_16022007.html

[3] Friends of the Earth press release `Ruling on legal challenge against the Food Standards Agency' Feb 23 2007 http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/ruling_on_legal_challenge_23022007.html

[4] Amended Emergency Decision 2006/754/EC on emergency measures regarding the non-authorised genetically modified organism `LL RICE 601' in rice products: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2006/l_306/l_30620061107en00170020.pdf

[5] FSA press release 1st September 2006

[6] Food and Drink Federation minutes of meeting with the FSA available with Friends of the Earth