Seed company Syngenta says it acted responsibly in selling two strains of genetically engineered corn that are approved for cultivation in the United States although not allowed for import by China, says DTN. Syngenta, based in Switzerland, has been sued by farmers and agribusiness giant Cargill on grounds they lost sales because China has rejected cargoes that contain one of the varieties, MIR 162. DTN quotes a Syngenta official as saying China had a corn glut and used the GE variety as a way to constrain imports. Gavilon Group is working with Syngenta to keep the two varieties in the domestic market.
A Gavilon official told DTN the situation facing Syngenta could become more common due to the long timeline needed to bring a GE variety onto the market and get approval of its worldwide. “The industry is going to have to get our hands around it somehow,” Gavilon vice president Greg Konsor told DTN.
The lawsuits over Syngenta’s MIR 162 corn pose immense implications, says Farm Journal, which quotes Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, as saying, “it would be very difficult to point to another case that has such potential magnitude.” The magazine says the legal issues “a contradictory clash of market freedom versus market responsibility” are ” a complicated Gordian knot for agriculture and U.S. farmers. “