September 1, 2006

Japan to ease Bt-10 corn control 
 

Japan's Farm Ministry said on Thursday (Aug 31) it has dropped a plan to regulate unapproved Bt-10 biotechcorn in US feed grain imports, saying the measure was no longer necessary. 

After beginning tests in May 2005, Japan found a total of 14 US feed corn cargoes contaminated with Bt-10

but there have been no similar reports since December last year. This being the case, the 1 percent tolerance level Japan imposed has become redundant, a Ministry official said.

Bt-10 is a corn strain that is genetically modified to produce a toxin that kills pests. The strain, made by Swiss agrochemicals group Syngenta AG, is not approved by the Japanese government as human food or animal feed.

Japan has a zero-tolerance policy on imports of unapproved GMO crops, and importers of crops tainted with unapproved GMO must destroy them or ship them back.

However, Japan's farm ministry has asked its Food Safety Commission to make an exception to the zero-tolerance rule in June 2005, when frequent discoveries of US cargoes tainted with Bt-10 disrupted corn distribution to Japan's livestock industry.

Japan needs 12 million tonnes of corn annually for animal feed and the US supplies 90 percent of its corn needs.

Approval was obtained after a year.

However, the commission said random tests on US feed corn cargoes would continue to prevent contaminated supplies from entering into the Japanese market.