Unlike earlier incidents, Asian customers for wheat grown in the U.S. Northwest did not bat an eye at the USDA announcement that GMO wheat was found growing in the wild in Washington State. “At this point there is no trade disruption and we do not expect any,” said U.S. Wheat Associates, the export promotion arm of the wheat industry, on Monday.
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan temporarily suspended purchases of U.S. wheat in July 2016 after 22 stalks of genetically modified wheat were discovered in a fallow field in Washington state. And last year, Japan and South Korea halted purchases of Canadian wheat for a month due to confirmation of GE wheat along an access road in southern Alberta.
GE wheat is not approved for cultivation anywhere in the world. The latest U.S. discovery is the fourth time since 2013 that GE wheat was discovered because “volunteer” plants survived a dose of the herbicide Roundup. The USDA’s biotechnology regulator, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, says it strengthened its oversight of GMO wheat field trials since the earlier incidents.
The USDA and U.S. Wheat Associates did not respond to questions why foreign customers did not interrupt purchases as they did in the past. When it announced on June 7 the discovery of GE wheat, the APHIS said there was no evidence that GMO wheat entered the food supply and that it was “collaborating with state, industry and trading partners.”
“At this time, we are still gathering information. We will provide additional information as soon as possible,” said APHIS on Monday.
Japan and South Korea have tested wheat shipments for GMO wheat since 2013 and have not found issue with U.S. wheat.
Washington state often ranks fourth among U.S. states in wheat production. The Washington Grain Commission says 85-90 percent of wheat grown in the state is exported, mainly to Pacific Rim nations.
The USDA has not said how many GMO wheat plants were found nor did it give the location of the discovery. The APHIS told Capital Press the volunteers were found in a fallow field that yielded soft white wheat last year.
Besides the two cases in Washington state, volunteer GMO wheat was found at a research farm in Montana in 2014 and in a farm field in eastern Oregon in spring 2013. The incidents in 2013, 2014 and 2016 involved different GMO strains developed by Monsanto. The seed and ag chemical company, now owned by Bayer, conducted field tests of Roundup-tolerant GMO wheat in the Pacific Northwest from 1999-2001 and then shut down the project.
A week ago, President Trump signed an executive order to modernize U.S. regulation of agricultural biotechnology and, referring to gene-edited crops and livestock, told USDA, FDA and EPA to use their existing powers “to exempt low-risk products of agricultural biotechnology from undue regulation.”