Japan bought 2.13 million bushels of U.S. Western White wheat on Thursday, ending a one-month interruption in purchases caused by the discovery of 22 stalks of unapproved GMO wheat in a fallow field in Washington State. U.S. Wheat Associates said trade disruptions related to the rogue wheat were minimal “because every stakeholder approached it in a reasonable way.”
South Korea stopped purchases of U.S. wheat for four days after the USDA announced the discovery and resumed them when it received a test, developed by Monsanto, to detect GMO contamination, said Capital Press. A U.S. Wheat spokesman told Capital Press that Japan has purchased nearly 1 million tonnes of U.S. wheat in the marketing year that began June 1, compared to 922,000 tonnes at the same point last year.
The July incident was the second discovery since April 2013 of unapproved wheat in the Pacific Northwest. The USDA spent months investigating the first case, in eastern Oregon, without finding the source of the GMO wheat.