U.S. law enforcement officials are calling on farms growing GMO seed to bolster their security against foreign nationals set on stealing the technology, says Reuters.
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, who heads the Justice Department’s national security division, recommends that farmers build fences or hire security services to patrol crops. But the agricultural industry says both suggestions are unrealistic, given the cost and challenge of guarding thousands of acres.
Concern over GMO theft spiked in 2013 after seven Chinese citizens were accused by U.S. authorities of taking seed from Iowa farms with the intention of shipping it back to China. To date, China has banned GMO crop production within its borders. President Xi has also called on China to become a leader in GMO development. If China could replicate GMO corn on its own, it could bypass at least eight years of research and huge laboratory costs, Monsanto told Reuters. The company spends roughly $1.5 billion each year when engineering a new plant. China is already pushing into the GMO market with the recent $43-billion purchase of Swiss-owned seed company, Syngenta.
As for the 2013 Iowa corn theft, U.S. officials have only prosecuted one Chinese suspect, Mo Hailong. Five other suspects are believed to have fled to China or Argentina, and one was released without charges. Hailong’s case was prosecuted as a national security breach, instead of as criminal case—a sign that the U.S. doesn’t believe China’s assurances that it had nothing to do with the crime.
“In cases like this, we can see connections, but proving to the threshold needed in court requires that we have documents that the government has directed this,” a law enforcement officer told Reuters. “It’s almost impossible to get.”