Food Standards Agency
Thursday 20 November 2008
Safer food better business banner
AZ-Directory
What's NewRSS
What is RSS?Wednesday 9 April 2008
Food Alert For Action on a red background
An emergency measure adopted by the European Commission will apply from 15 April 2008, to make sure rice and rice products imported from China do not contain an unauthorised genetically modified (GM) rice known as 'Bt63'. Local authorities have been asked to liaise with businesses in their local area that may sell affected products. The Agency has issued a Food Alert for Action.
Bt63 is an unauthorised genetically modified organism (GMO) and so should not be sold in the European Union (EU).
The Commission Decision will require imports of the rice and rice products listed below, originating or consigned from China, to be certified as being free of the unauthorised Bt63 GM rice.
National legislation to implement the Commission Decision in England has been prepared and will be submitted for Ministerial consideration next week. The legislation is titled 'The Specified Products from China (Restriction on First Placing on the Market) (England) Regulations 2008'. Further information on this legislation will be sent to local authorities in due course.
The Commission Decision specifies that, from 15 April, products originating in or consigned from China with the commodity number (CN) codes listed below, may only be placed on the EU market if:
or
The measure also requires that Member States take appropriate measures, including random sampling and analysis, concerning the products listed below presented for importation or already on the market.
About the regulation
Regulation (EC) No. 1829/2003 on Genetically Modified Food and Feed stipulates that food and feed containing GM material cannot be placed on sale in the EU unless the associated GMO has been authorised under the regulation, following a rigorous safety assessment. Material from unauthorised GMOs in food or feed is not permitted at any level. Bt63 rice is a GMO which is not authorised and, as such, may not be placed on the EU market in food or feed. To do so would be an offence against Article 4(2) of the EC Regulation and an offence in English law under either Regulation 5(1) of the Genetically Modified Food (England) Regulations 2004 or Regulation 5(1) of the Genetically Modified Animal Feed (England) Regulations 2004.
The Agency considers that this unauthorised GM material should be considered 'unsafe' within the meaning of that term in Article 14 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002 (General Food Law). The Agency is not, at the moment, aware of any specific health implications for consumers who eat rice products containing Bt63.
Products originating or consigned from China that must be certified from 15 April as being free of the unauthorised GM rice Bt63:
Further information on products affected will be revised as and when appropriate.
Local authorities have been asked to identify the food and animal feed businesses in their local area that may sell potentially affected products.
Full details about local authority responsibilities, including sampling methods and enforcement actions, can be found in the Food Alert for Action at the link below.
If there is a problem with a food product that means it should not be sold, then it might be 'withdrawn' (taken off the shelves) or 'recalled' (when customers are asked to return the product). Food alerts are the FSA's way of letting local authorities and consumers know about problems associated with food and, in some cases, providing details of specific action to be taken. They are issued under two categories:
You can get FSA alerts either by email or SMS text. Visit the Get Alerts page at the link below to find out how.
You can also subscribe to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for food and allergy alerts. RSS is a format for distributing news content and is a simple way to keep up to date with the latest news on a website. When we publish via RSS, you can automatically get the updated content via a 'news aggregator' or 'news reader'. Our RSS feed will contain a brief summary and link back to our web content. Click on ‘What is RSS’ on the left of this page for more details.
Download pdf
(pdf 35KB) Further information on controls for unauthorised 'Bt63' genetic modification in specified products from China Read the letter issued to Port Health Authorities in England on 9 April 2008Download pdf
(pdf 666KB) (External) Get Adobe Acrobat reader You may need the free Acrobat Reader to view a pdfFind out what our other sites have to offer