| WASHINGTON,
July 14, 2005, (Dow Jones via Cropchoice.com):
Japan has discovered the unapproved Bt10 genetically
modified organism in yet another shipment from the U.S.,
making it the fifth such find since the beginning of
June, a Japanese government official said Tuesday.
Shin Yokoyama, agriculture counselor at the Japanese
Embassy here, said 3,880 metric tons of corn were removed
from a U.S. shipment that arrived in a port in Kashima,
Japan. He said the corn was secured before it could
reach the market.
Japan still tests for Bt10 with a zero tolerance level,
but the country's Food Safety Commission is now considering
the possibility of relaxing that.
Japan, the largest foreign market for U.S. corn, imported
603.8 million bushels in the 2003-04 marketing year,
according to USDA data compiled by the National Corn
Growers Association.
Switzerland's Syngenta AG announced March 22 that it
inadvertently sold a limited amount of the unapproved
Bt10 corn seed instead of the approved Bt11 to U.S.
farmers who planted it on 37,000 acres from 2001 through
2004.
U.S. government and Syngenta officials have maintained
that even though Bt10 was never approved by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture or the Environmental Protection
Agency, it is safe and nearly identical to Bt11 corn,
which has been approved in the U.S.
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