The announcement that quarantine authorities have returned 1.25 million tons of U.S. corn shipments after detecting an unapproved genetically modified (GM) strain has triggered concern among Chinese consumers.
Lu Chunming, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), said at a Monday press conference that Chinese authorities have detected the GM strain MIR162 in U.S. corn shipments since October last year when the first batch of MIR162-tainted corn was found in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province. MIR162 is a kind of insect-resistant transgenic corn from Syngenta, a Swiss-based bio-technology company, and is not approved by China’s Ministry of Agriculture (MOA).
The decision to refuse the corn has seen a public debate over GM food safety, with some scientists saying the concerns are groundless.
“Rejection is an act of popularization of science too,” Cui Yongyuan, a former TV host and a firm opponent of GM food, wrote on his Sina Weibo. His opinion was opposed by Fang Zhouzi, an expert in chemical biology and a GM food supporter.
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“The authorities are responding to public pressure which questions the allegedly loose management of GM food. They are trying to prove otherwise,” Fang noted, adding that the rejected shipments from the U.S. could be exported to South Korea, where the new strain is approved, but Chinese businesses may suffer financially.
Read the full, original article: Concern over GM food as U.S. corn returned
