Roundup Ready alfalfa worries growers / Japan finds a seventh rogue corn shipment

1.Roundup Ready alfalfa worries growers
2. Japan finds a seventh shipment with Bt-10 maize

EXCERPTS: "The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan... requested the importer to destroy the volume or to order the ship to return to the country of origin." (item 2)

"There is no possible way that the Japanese customer will accept it," said Chep Gauntt, president of the Washington State Hay Growers Association and a Burbank-area hay grower. "We stand the chance of losing all of our export market."

Columbia Basin growers export about $140 million in alfalfa to Japan a year. And hay is the largest export by volume in the Pacific Northwest, shipped out of the ports of Tacoma, Seattle, Portland and Oakland, Calif.
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1.Roundup Ready alfalfa worries growers
By Anna King, Herald staff writer
TriCityHerald, August 5th, 2005
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6782825p-6672051c.html

Alfalfa growers in the Mid-Columbia say they aren't ready to grow Roundup Ready alfalfa because they're worried that if they do their export markets in Japan could ban Washington hay.

The genetically modified plants have a resistance to the weed killer Roundup, enabling farmers to spray fields for weeds without killing the crop. However, the perception, growers say, is that the product is unnatural and could affect milk and people.

Monsanto and Forage Genetics International, which jointly produce the product, received U.S. Department of Agriculture approval for the hay in July and have started selling the seed in every state but Washington. The companies are poised to release the seed in the state as early as spring 2006, and the first crop could be cut and baled that summer.

But those in Washington who export high-value hay say their customers in Japan don't want the alfalfa in their dairy feed troughs.

However, Monsanto spokeswoman Jennifer Garrett said the company expects the Japanese government to approve Roundup Ready alfalfa by the end of the year.

But Gauntt said even with government approval, if the Japanese dairymen don't like the product, they won't import it or allow it in shipments. And that means big-money losses for the Mid-Columbia hay exporters.

Talks between Monsanto, Forage Genetics and the hay association have been going on for a few years. But with the date of the seed release edging forward, the situation is becoming increasingly tense.

This week, Gauntt said he learned that a longtime member of the association's board of directors, William "Bill" Ford, is being paid by Monsanto, which raises ethics concerns.

Ford is a retired Washington State University agronomist who worked out of the Pasco extension office for about 34 years. He helped test new alfalfa varieties in the area and has worked extensively with area growers and exporters.

"He's had the trust of everyone, and no one even questioned it," Gauntt said.

Ford said he's been working as a consultant for the company for about two or three years and didn't see it as a conflict of interest because he has never voted on the subject at association meetings.

"All I did was to work with them and put them in contact with the major exporters here in Washington," he said.

Ford and the companies declined to discuss how much he had been paid.

Mark McCaslin, president of Forage Genetics, said his company did compensate Ford for travel expenses but that he worked only as a liaison between the companies and Washington hay exporters to set up meetings. Gauntt said he's mainly concerned with what Ford may have shared from confidential discussions among association members about Monsanto and Forage Genetics. This week, the association issued a statement asking Monsanto to delay its seed release in Washington for another year.

"He comes and listens as we are very candid," Gauntt said. "He is listening and bringing that back to Monsanto. He's capitalized on that in the form of money."

But Gauntt said the association has no formal policy about disclosure of directors' compensation from companies.

"I had no idea that it was this deep," he said. "We're businessmen and we're not naive, but maybe in a way we have been."

Brent Evans, international sales manager for Eckenberg Farms of Mattawa, said he's not worried about Roundup Ready alfalfa as a product, but he is extremely concerned about the Japanese perception.

Evans lived in Japan for about six years and said consumers and farmers there are very health-conscious and will ban anything they view as contaminated or dangerous.

In 1995, he worked for the Washington State Apple Commission in Japan when the Japanese shut down imports of all Washington apples after a chemical residue was discovered on less than 1 percent of the fruit.

"It's an underlying fear that we are messing with nature," he said. Evans said Eckenberg Farms ships about 5,000 shipping containers of alfalfa to Japan each year.

That exported hay is the most expensive sold in Washington, he said, and a disruption in that market would have dismal effect on hay prices in the Northwest.

Evans said his company would like the product better if the companies would help the growers educate their consumers in Japan.

He said that might take an additional year or two.

But make a wrong move, and it could take years to resolve, he said.

"If you think they won't stop alfalfa from Washington State, all you have to do is to look at beef," Evans said, referring to the trade embargo on U.S. beef after mad cow disease was discovered in a slaughtered Mabton cow. "They can't get the Japanese to budge."
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2.Japan finds a seventh shipment with Bt-10 maize
http://www.agrolink.com.br/noticias/pg_detalhe_noticia.asp?cod=30060

The Ministry of the Agriculture of Japan announced this Thursday (04-08-2005) to have discovered a seventh shipment of grains for feed from the U.S.A. with Bt-10GM maize, and it requested the importer to destroy the volume or to order the ship to return to the country of origin. Tests made with samples of the maize from North America for feed had resulted positive for traces of Bt-10, a genetically modified variety of maize produced by the Swiss agrochemical corporation Syngenta AG, a type not approved for distribution. The company announced in March that remains of its seeds of maize in the U.S.A. was contaminated erroneously with the Bt-10 between 2001 and 2004. The shipment arrived on 15 July in the port of Hakata, in the Japanese island of Kyushu, in the south of the country. The ministry did not disclose the name of the importer.

By Aya Takada
Source: Reuters