Arsenic, a natural element, became a widespread problem after the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s when the flooded fields used for intensive rice farming brought arsenic to the surface and concentrated it there. The World Health Organization estimates that 112 million people in this region have levels of arsenic in their bodies that can cause disease. Hundreds of thousands in each of India and Bangladesh have cancer attributed to arsenic, making the crisis worse than the toxic fumes from Bhopal. Today it is still dangerous to drink from wells in some regions of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

The story says that a University of Georgia team has engineered a new version of a little-known plant called arabidopsis to remove the arsenic. The plant sucks up contaminated water from the soil and binds the element to its own cells.

This leaves contaminated plants which must then be treated as toxic waste, as arsenic can't be destroyed. But this is much easier than trying to dispose of the poisoned soil itself. Arabidopsis, a relative of mustard, was the first plant whose full set of genes, or genome, was decoded.


THE LOOMING TRADE WAR OVER PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY

Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-018.pdf Executive Summary American farmers are caught in the middle of a battle between the United States and the European Union over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The EU is one of the most important potential markets for those crops, two-thirds of which are grown in the United States, but impending EU regulations on biotech crops would seriously disrupt the flow of those crops to European markets.

Plant biotechnology has dramatically boosted American farmers' productivity and lowered their costs and, at the same time, helped them to protect the natural environment by reducing their use of agricultural chemicals and preventing soil erosion. Consumers have also benefited from lower prices and
a healthier environment. In developing countries, the deployment of plant biotechnology can spell the difference between life and death and between health and disease for hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people.

One scientific panel after another has concluded that biotech foods are safe to eat, and so has the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Even an EU review issued in the fall of 2001 of 81 separate European studies of GMOs found no evidence that biotech foods posed any new risk to health of the environment.
The EU has banned all food containing GMOs on the basis of the "precautionary principle," under which regulators do not need to show scientifically that a biotech crop in unsafe before banning it; they need
only show that it has not been proved harmless. Jettisoning scientific risk assessment and replacing it with a precautionary approach will open the entire trading system to interruptions based on arbitrary justifications.

Capricious labeling requirements will also proliferate. Such labels are unjustifiably stigmatizing and costly and offer no consumer health or safety benefits.

Consequently, all U.S. negotiators involved with trade in biotech crops must make it unalterable U.S. policy to oppose the application of the precautionary principle and insist instead on scientifically based risk standards in all international trade forums. Complete document available at http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-018.pdf

 
NEW ORGANIC FOOD RULES TO LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Reuters
Deborah Cohen and Jessica Wohl

CHICAGO/NEW YORK - U.S. consumers, long besieged and sometimes bewildered by food makers' claims about "organic" products, are, according to this story, about to get a government seal of approval on their premium-priced groceries.

The story says that companies ranging from giants like Kraft Foods Inc. and General Mills Inc. to independents such as Annie's Naturals and Honest Tea expect the new government labeling requirements, which take effect on Oct. 21, to level the playing field in the fastest-growing segment of the food industry.

Katherine DiMatteo, who heads the Greenfield, Massachusetts-based Organic Trade Association, a group representing U.S. manufacturers and growers, was quoted as saying, "Manufacturers felt their natural-product market was being threatened by all types of claims. There had to be consumer confidence in the label."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is requiring food companies to adopt strict standards for organic foods, ensuring they are produced free of pesticides and genetically modified crops.

In the past, some 30 states and more than 50 certifiers, all with different standards and regulations, called their own shots on what could and couldn't be deemed organic.

The USDA, whose National Organic Standards Board has been working with food companies and growers since 1990 to develop the standards, is allowing three tiers of organic claims, with only the top tier permitted to carry a "USDA Organic" seal.

Steve Demos, president of White Wave, the Denver, Colorado-based soymilk division of Dean Foods Co., was quoted as saying, "Now you have a differentiation between products. The consumer is now given the means to make a credible choice."

Meeting the new USDA hurdles is worth the trouble, companies said, if it means keeping a stake in the organic category, which has been growing at about 20 percent annually.

Sales of organic foods are expected to reach $11 billion in 2003, according to the Organic Trade Association. Growth remains promising, as organics now account for only 2 percent of foods sold at retail.

Margot McShane, director of marketing for Half Moon Bay, California-based juice company Odwalla Inc., part of soft drink giant Coca-Cola Co.'s Minute Maid juice company, was quoted as saying, "We see organics as a huge opportunity." (hope they keep the O157 out, unlike in 1996 -- dp). The story says that at about $2.39 per 15.2-ounce bottle, Odwalla's organic juices cost about 9 percent more than its regular line. H.J. Heinz Co.'s newly introduced Heinz Organic Ketchup sells at about $1.99 for a 14-ounce
container, 30 percent more than regular Heinz.

A 15.2-ounce bottle of organic Naked Juice, made by Ultimate Juice Co. of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, retails at about $2.89, or about double the price of a 16-ounce carton of regular orange juice from Pepsi-Co Inc.'s Tropicana.