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China Rejects 545,000 Tons of US Genetically Modified Corn
hawkinspeter writes "The BBC is reporting that China has rejected 545,000 tons of U.S. corn that was found to contain an unapproved genetically modified strain. Although China doesn't have a problem per se with GM crops (they've been importing GM soybeans since 1997) — but their product safety agency found MIR162 in 12 batches of corn. 'The safety evaluation process [for MIR162] has not been completed and no imports are allowed at the moment before the safety certificate is issued,' said Nui Din, China's vice agricultural minister. The Chinese are now calling on U.S. authorities to tighten their controls to prevent unapproved strains from being sent to China after the first batch of corn was rejected in November due to MIR162."
Since GM crops are already shown to jump to other fields, it's hardly surprising. And hardly the only time this has happened. This is just another friendly FU, like the "near collision" in the sea off China, to remind the US that China holds all the cards.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Isn't this just things working as they should?
The North Koreans will happily take it.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
We should reject their 545,000 tons of smog.
"The safety evaluation process [for MIR162] has not been completed and no imports are allowed at the moment before the safety certificate is issued," said China's vice agricultural minister, Niu Dun.
The Ministry of Agriculture has recently launched a publicity campaign to allay concerns over GM foods and says the criticisms are unfounded.
Seems pretty fair to me. sloppy testing on the US end is all.
Apparently the melamine powder content was too low...
Are you going to build a house out of Corn?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXIds5_F50
Assuming that Chinese health authorities have their priorities straight, that must mean that eating US corn is more dangerous than breathing the air in Beijing. This is worrisome!
I hope that ALL GMO crops are banned worldwide, including the US.
On a serious note... If a TPP nation were to try such a thing, Monsanto (or whoever) would be able to sue the government in an international tribunal.
Where does it say they threw it away? They rejected the first of a series of shipments. It just means the ship will need to unload somewhere else.
They are also reluctant to permit supermarkets to stock garbage bags with greater dimensions than 500*650 millimeters, and, no pharmaceutical shop may sell no more than two boxes of golden throat lozenges per week. That's all central planning folks.
Who said anything about throwing away? They refused the shipment. Its up to the seller to figure out what to do with it now but there was no mention of it being destroyed.
China has a "Product safety agency"? Really? It must only apply to imports, not exports.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Oh, don't worry. They WILL throw it away, under the watchful eye of an armed guard if necessary, before they give it away.
Are you going to build a house out of Corn?
http://inhabitat.com/corn-waste-transformed-into-versatile-building-material/
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It was tested for two years http://cera-gmc.org/index.php?action=gm_crop_database&mode=ShowProd&data=MIR162. Considering most drugs take decades if they even make it to market.
No good deed goes unpunished.
HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?
Well, it depends. Is that food actually safe to eat? In this case, probably, but that hasn't been vetted and proven by the Chinese government, so they're quite sane in erring on the side of safety. Especially considering all the product recalls involving tainted food from their local producers. Plus, it's not like the US or China are strapped for food at the national level.
The problem with starvation has been one of distribution for much of the past century. If this food IS being thrown away (and that's a big "if"), then it's because there's no good way of getting it to someone who could pay some price for it before it spoils. (And food aid is generally not done for completely free.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
China lines up and bids against lots of others for the privilege of holding t-bills. All China has is cheap labor to make things the US invented, and that labor will soon be irrelevant because of automation and 3D printers.
With that much corn, you could build a palace!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Let's say China ships us 545,000 tons of toothpaste laced with lead, and our health inspectors reject it. Would this even be news or just another day at the Los Angeles shipping ports?
As it stands, our trade deficit with China is so great, we're coming up with creative uses for all the shipping containers being stocked 30 or 40 high -- we could build housing for the homeless from all those containers, and completely eliminate homelessness in this country, if only we had the land to put all those containers somewhere else.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Assuming this was the same corn that made its way into Taco Bell brand tacos.
Knowing customers regulations how does one ship a half million tons of something they know or should know will be rejected if inspected? Cross their fingers...hope for the best?
I hope someone is getting slapped/fired.
Its just a case of its approved for use in the USA but the Chinese version of the FDA hasn't finished their approval process. Its like technology has to get the FCC stamp of approval before it can be sold in the USA even if its already cleared in another country.
Things just working as intended and somebody got sloppy sending it before it was authorized.
Would you poison a starving man?
What it were tainted with lead, they'd probably have no problem with that... y'know, being China and all that..
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This sick propaganda starts with the media. Fuck reading a story's contents, you give me the color/race, ethnicity, religion, sexual-orientation, wealth/affluence, partisanship of the story (domestic and international), I'll tell you exactly what the reactions of my countrymen will be regardless of the facts. This post-colonial imperialism is sickening and runs through the veins of our society from top to bottom. It creates double standards, domestically and internationally.
China and its Ministry of Agriculture rejects unapproved goods just like our FDA would. How dare they expect the same as us? Let the smear campaign begin! China executes Uyghur Muslims, all of a sudden China is the best. Why? Because in our hierarchical caste system, China seems ranks higher than Muslims. This is the reality, a single stamp on your forehead of an identity defines one entirely and groups you with a stereotype irrelevant of the facts. And if you think that people are willingly going to accept second-class treatment, you are tripping, keep investing in the military as this is the only way.
This is exactly why:
These double standards and injustices go on BECAUSE you permit it to happen. I'm the fucking patriot here, you are just a mindless sheep falling in line, fuck you!
Would you poison a starving man?
Depends on how slow the poison works, and how serious the side-effects are preceding death. If it takes 40 years to kill, with no side effects until year 39, it might be a worthwhile tradeoff.
All the chemicals and crap they put in everything they make and export to us, and they wont accept some corn..
"How dare China import lead-tainted goods! Ban!"
"How dare China ban our GMO exports!"
American Exceptionalism is Exceptional Hypocrisy.
Moreover, those tests started with small scale products that took decades or centuries to work through, as opposed to being planted as a monoculture through billions of hectares at a time.
But, hey, go ahead and don't eat cultivated foodstuffs, only wild produce, until they're proven safe.
Don't use that to insist that GMOs don't have to be tested.
Yes, yes we have. Many people, even here on Slashdot, would rather see people starve or suffer from malnutrition instead of having them eat certain foods that they have no reason to believe are harmful in any way except they have deemed them as "unnatural."
Much the same way that we, as a society, decided that we would rather see millions of those darker folks die from Malaria just so we can pretend to care about the birds that were not being harmed (as proven by the EPA study) by a certain pesticide.
We send them something *safe* and they reject it. Just pour some lead in it.
[citation needed]
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Think of all the corn and E.T. cartridges we could donate to the starving if we weren't so short-sighted.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The country where they make fake everything, right down to fake eggs has a problem with genetic modifications to corn.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/06/how-to-make-a-rotten-egg/
The whole point of some of these changes is to make the food no longer attractive (or possibly even toxic) to pests. It seems reasonable that the changes required to do this may have some impact on people as well.
That said, direct genetic modification is a lot less likely to cause problems than the radiation-based mutation where they just blast it and see what they end up with--that ends up changing a lot more DNA than the direct modification would, and has far fewer labelling restrictions.
Not many people would consider the holder of ones debt a "privilege", more like having the money to buy them.
Seriously, are they rare or something?
Freedom means asking permission and taking orders.
...been vetted and proven by the Chinese government
Not sure if serious.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They have been found making "oil" out of sewage, you'd think something like this would pass without any problem.
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/12/19/six-chinese-nationals-indicted-in-corn-seed-theft-case/article?nclick_check=1
Six Chinese nationals have been indicted as part of an ongoing agriculture espionage case involving the attempted theft of valuable trade secrets from U.S. seed manufacturing companies.
U.S. Attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt announced the indictments Thursday morning in a news statement.
Federal prosecutors announced last week that the men had been accused of traveling across the Midwest to steal millions of dollars in seed technology trade secrets for use at their China-based seed company.
>No wonder people are obese, sick and have cancer. GM is poison.
Don't look to the micro-nutrients first. Start with the macro-nutrients. We eat a lot more of them.
Try sugar, wheat and weird fats that didn't exist before 1970 for starters.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Much the same way that we, as a society, decided that we would rather see millions of those darker folks die from Malaria just so we can pretend to care about the birds that were not being harmed (as proven by the EPA study) by a certain pesticide.
Curious, what pesticide are you talking about? While some insecticides such as those that are arsenic based have been banned for everything it's hard to believe that ingesting lead arsenic wouldn't negatively impact birds (and people). Of course that was banned before the EPA existed.
Then there are insecticides such as DDT that are banned for everything except using on malaria carrying mosquitoes. Of course DDT is pretty useless now as it was overused and mosquitoes have evolved resistance to it. Important thing about most pesticides, they should only be used sparingly to avoid resistance in the target population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?
Quite a few reasons actually
Helping starving people is most of the time quite costly and getting the food where it is needed is one of the hardest parts (try to do your charity work in north korea for example). An actual global food shortage is lukily limited to nightmares and with the overproduction in first world nations it is unlikely to happen for many more decades, the problem of distribution however remains largely unsolved (maybe the U.S. could spread food instead of democracy?).
When your citizens start growing an extra pair of arms you know you're in trouble.
Why aren't you getting worked up about all the food that we turn into fuel instead of giving to starving people?
The poisons and toxins their industries are letting into the air, lakes, rivers and oceans cause more mutations than any GM crop, have they evaluated what those toxins are doing to their people? hell no, but watch out, spend a lil money on foreign food grains and they'd better be straight plain grains.
Get real - their people are getting sick and dying in droves from their own short-sighted stupidity - letting a lil gm corn into their country won't do anything to the numbers that are dying daily due to their poor air and water quality....
A country responsible for leaded paint in toys, melamine in pet food and baby milk is refusing corn over GMO concerns ?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
For a fucking ear of corn. A buck for a fucking Orange. A fucking buck for a god damn apple.
I am going to hijack one of those fucking trucks.
Better than a armored.
I know I'm not the first one to point this out here, but seriously, let me repeat this:
HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?
How have we - collectively - come to the point where this sort of things is acceptable? This is completely indecent, and someone in power should be shot over this.
You dont see the big picture - people are starving BECAUSE we overproduce thanks to huge subsidies. Africa was able to feed itself before we started sending cheaper food that destroyed their economy.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
How come the US cant make things they invented?
Don't punch the gift horse in the mouth, take the damned food and eat it.. Or starve.
Ungrateful pinheads
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Every time you eat RoundUp Ready corn, soy, canola you are eating glyphosate. The pathway by which glyposate kills plants is known as the shikimate pathway. This same pathway exists in the bacteria in your gut. That is also where 75% of your immune system is regulated as well as it has been called your "second brain" due to its importance in providing the building blocks your brain needs to function.
Once you have poisoned your gut bacteria you will get a lot more autoimmune and inflammation based diseases and conditions.
The EPA is increasing limits on allowable glyphosate in food crops from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm and in oil seed crops from 20 ppm to 40 ppm. Of course it is perfectly safe because the company making it said so.
Consume at your own risk.
Actually, no, they won't. Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, and others have all rejected GM corn.
I'm trying to be careful of it here at home, but if I were starving that calculus would be much different.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If they plant that corn, would it be bye-bye for the honey-bees?
Isn't killing "birds (and people)" the goal of a pesticide?
*ducks*
(And yes, I realise that my comment requires a misreading of the pp. But it's a joke.)
Look out!
The irony of China rejecting food from the US is incredible considering the amount of toxic garbage they ship over here daily with no remorse.
Never, ever, ever, ever eat anything that came from China. I boycott all Chinese food and candy products, including for animals, and I make sure to convince everyone else I know or come across to do the same.
Unlikely, bees are not needed for corn pollination. But the GM soybeans do have flowers. I remember bees on those while working in the fields.
No good deed goes unpunished.