US animal feed to be banned by EU

Ireland: The EU is expected to halt all imports of US animal feed after it was discovered that an unauthorised GM maize variety has found its way onto the market.

Ireland is an importer of GM corn gluten seed of this type and the banned variety could have found its way onto the Irish market, sources confirmed.

The corn, Bt10, manufactured by the Swiss based Syngenta company, contains a gene that is highly resistant to antibiotics the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) has confirmed.

Its consumption could make animals eating feed made with the maize resistant to an important group of antibiotics, though the EFSA claims there is little chance of the gene being transferred to people. EU member states are expected today to demand that all shipments from the US are certified not to contain illegal genetically modified (GM) maize.

This is expected to be adopted by the commission early next week, and its effect will be to block imports of all maize-based animal feed from the US as Syngenta has not come up yet with a way of detecting the Bt10 in feed imports.

Syngenta informed the US authorities last December of the mistake with the illegal variety but only alerted the European Food Safety Authority on March 23.

The firm sold several hundred tons of the GM maize seed to US farmers over the past four years. It mistook it for another approved GM variety.

Friends of the Earth spokesperson Adrian Bebb, said: “the failure of Syngenta to provide the basic information needed to test for contamination is a disgrace.”