The Food Standards Agency hasinformed me that Commission Decision 2006/578/EC, issued on 23 August 2006, requiresall imports of long grain or broken rice originating from the USA to be accompaniedby an analytical report from an accredited laboratory demonstrating that the productsare not contaminated with the GM rice variety LLRICE601, which was recently identifiedin samples of rice in the USA.Any imports of long grain orbroken rice that arrive from the USA without such certification are being held atports until they can be certified to be free of LLRICE601.The European Commission’s JointResearch Centre has validated two methods for the detection of the LLRICE601 varietyof genetically method rice.