Update on US GM rice

Tuesday 6 July 2010

The FSA has written to enforcement authorities, and others, to tell them that the emergency measures controlling the import of rice products from the US, which have been in place since 2006, have been revoked by the European Commission.

This means long grain rice from the US can be imported without a certificate declaring it to be free of the presence of the genetically modified rice, LLRICE601.

The situation regarding the presence of LLRICE601 in the US rice harvest has now improved to the extent that there were no positive results for the 2009 harvest and this, together with the absence of positive results from the random sampling and analysis carried out by European Union (EU) member states, allows for the revocation of the EU emergency measures.

The emergency measures required all consignments of long grain rice from the US to be accompanied by a certificate declaring it to be free of the presence of LLRICE601, otherwise the consignment should be held at the port while sampling and analysis for the presence of LLRICE601 is carried out.

The previous update about US genetically modified rice can be found at the link below.