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Call for ban on U.S. rice

London: Environment groups have urged the European Commission to follow Japan and restrict imports of American rice after the U.S. Government admitted that an illegal and untested genetically modified strain had contaminated the food chain. The announcement said conventional long-grain rice had been contaminated by a GM rice that was grown at experimental sites between 1998 and 2001. However, there was no indication as to how widespread the contamination had been, how it occurred or why it had taken until now for the disclosure to be made. The U.K. imported 82,625 tonnes of U.S. rice in 2004. The contamination source is a trial GM rice produced by the German-based biotechnology company Bayer. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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