Safety Concern

    And the safety certificates issued to Monsanto stipulate that the exporters and the importers must make sure that the GM soybean be confined to use as processing material, to prevent its environmental release.

    But Sze of Greenpeace China is not convinced. "It's hard to control where the soybean would be wound up," he says. "Each soybean is a seed. Once growing in the field, it could get hybridized with wild or conventional farm soy plants, resulting in GM contamination."

    As a consequence of the undesirable hybridization, wild soy bean could produce herbicide-resistance genes and be transmuted into new strains of "superweeds." At the same time, it could become impossible for plant scientists to use genes of wild soybean any more to cultivate new soy varieties.

    Despite international controversy over GMOs, says Yang, China must dedicate resources on the research and development of GM crops to guarantee its position in the field due to the country's population pressure and due to the technology blockade from foreign corporations, who only sell their products rather than transfer technology.

    MOA sources indicate that the total acreage of GM crops throughout China now totals 2.8 million hectares, only a tiny fraction out of the 126 million hectares of farmland.

    But China is cautious in the steps, with restrictions on their environmental release, says Xue Dayuan, deputy director of CBD & Biosafety Office at the State Environmental Protection Administration of China. To date, only 59 varieties of six types of GM crops, mostly Bt cotton, have been permitted to grow in fields. No single staple food crops, such as rice and soybean, hasever passed muster.

    Public Awakening

    Chinese consumers didn't seem to care about GMOs' impact on biosafety until the news of European communities' rejection of them reached China. Now the public is awakening to have ordinary people's right to know honored.

    In 2003 Greenpeace commissioned Zhongshan University in Guangzhou to conduct a survey on the southern city's consumers' attitudes towards GM products.

    The survey found that most of the 1,000 consumers polled preferfood commodities containing no GM ingredients, while 87 percent think transgenic food products should be labeled, so that they could exercise their right to choose. And almost half of the respondents would pay higher price for GM-free stuffs.

    The consumers' safety concern dramatically escalated when Zhu Yanling, a Shanghai citizen, filed a lawsuit against Shanghai Nestle Co. last year for not labeling its Nesquik instant chocolate drink as genetically engineered food. The middle-aged mother was seeking only 13.6 yuan (1.64 US dollars) in compensation, twice the price of the drink.

    The meager claim is symbolic, she says, as the suit did not aimat money but at the consumers' right to information and choices. "We have the right to know if the food on the shelves are natural or genetically modified and we have the right to choose what we want in the food. This right should be respected."

    Zhou Li, a high school teacher in Beijing, felt betrayed after she learned that Nestle tried to sate Chinese customers with GM products without labeling. Technically, she doesn't know what GMO is, but she resents the company's indifference to consumers' rightto know in a developing country.

    She says she'll not buy Nestle's products anymore. "Customers, no matter in a developed or developing country, have the equal right to safe food and a safe environment." Enditem