US-China GM food study misled Hunan kids

Twenty-five elementary students in Hengyang, Hunan Province, were confirmed to been fed "Golden Rice," a genetically modified (GM) food, in a US-China joint research project, according to a statement published on the website of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Thursday.

Three major researchers from the Chinese CDC, Hunan CDC and Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences were also removed from their posts as punishment for deliberately hiding the facts from local authorities and students' parents, said the statement.

Tang Guangwen, director of the Carotenoid and Health Laboratory of Tufts University in the US, brought the cooked rice into China without reporting it to the authorities on May 29, 2008.

During lunch on June 2, Tang and other researchers mixed the GM rice with regular food and served it to 25 students at an elementary school in Hengnan county.

Each of them was served 60 grams one time.

The Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported Thursday that local officials in Hunan offered a compensation package to the parents of all the children in the school on November 30.

The parents of the students who did not eat the GM rice were to be given 10,000 yuan ($1,605), and who were fed "Golden Rice" were to be offered 80,000 yuan.

Greenpeace broke the news on the test of the GM rice by citing a paper published in the August edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.