Amid widespread consumer concern over transgenic crops, a Shanghai-based firm has developed a fingernail-sized bio-technology chip that it says can tell within four hours if farm produce has been genetically modified.
The chip, only one square centimeter in size, can identify 40 genes and screen out transgenic soybean, corn, cotton, rapeseed and other agricultural products, said Huang Xinhua, an executive of the chip's maker, the Shanghai Boxing Gene Chip Corporation.
Used in testing equipment, Huang said the chip can tell whether the transgenic product has been authorized to enter the Chinese market.
The chip is being used for inspection and quarantine purposes by Guangzhou customs in southern China, which has reported the largest imports of transgenic products. Huang said it is also being trialed on the consumer market and will soon be promoted nationwide.
Although the effects of transgenic technology are still hotly debated by scientists around the world, an official with the State Environmental Protection Administration has warned China has the world's fourth largest area of transgenic crops after the United States, Canada and Argentina.
(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2002)
