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French authorities investigate GM jellyfish-lamb sold as meat in Paris Lamb with jellyfish gene 'may have been deliberately sent to abattoir'
(about 6 hours later)
French authorities are looking into how a lamb genetically modified with jellyfish protein was sold as meat to an unknown customer, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday. A lamb born with a jellyfish gene was mistakenly sold for human consumption and probably ended up on someone’s plate, French authorities have said. A dispute between researchers at a highly respected national institute may have been the cause of the animal being deliberately sent to the abattoir last year. Police have now been called in and an inquiry launched into how the lamb could have been passed as fit for human consumption.
The jellyfish-lamb, called “Rubis”, was sent to an abattoir from the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris late last year and somehow ended up on a butcher’s slab. Le Parisien newspaper reported that the animal’s mother was a sheep called Emeraude whose DNA had been modified to include a jellyfish gene called Green Fluorescent Protein (GRP) by researchers at the National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) in Paris. Her lamb, Rubis, was born with the gene in the spring of 2014. Although produced for research purposes, Rubis was allegedly deliberately mixed with several other lambs that had not been genetically modified and sent to an abattoir.
“A female lamb born to a sheep that was genetically modified as part of a medical research programme was sold to a person in the Parisian region in October 2014,” said the National Institute for Agricultural Research in a statement, confirming a story first reported by Le Parisien newspaper. The president of the INRA, Benoît Malpaux, described the apparently “malicious act” as unacceptable, but was quick to reassure the public that there was no risk to humans. “The consumption of this meat presents no risk for the health for the consumer,” he said. “We are sure that individual acts that are unacceptable were committed … followed by a chain of errors and responsibilities within the hierarchy.”
“Although this ovine does not present any risk to humans or the environment, the institute has just informed local prosecutors about this breach of environmental regulations,” it added. In what could have been the plot of a science fiction film, Emeraude and Rubis were reportedly part of a programme called Green Sheep launched in 2009, aimed at carrying out experiments on mammals for “therapeutic research”. The jellyfish protein was reportedly introduced into the sheep to make their skin transparent and enable researchers to “visualise and study heart transplants”.
The case has been taken up by a public health court in Paris, a judicial source told AFP. Investigators suspect a researcher may have tricked his superior into signing a document sending the animal to the abattoir where it was sold to an unknown individual in November 2014. When the the team leader discovered the deception, he failed to report the missing animal to his bosses. Working relations between the two men were said to have been tense.
Rubis “found itself on a plate! Who ate it? No one knows,” exclaimed Le Parisien on Tuesday. Malpaux said a laboratory technician had been provisionally suspended and will face a disciplinary hearing in July. “We don’t know his motive or aim precisely, but the atmosphere within the team could be behind this behaviour,” he said. “The facts are unacceptable and call for the greatest severity. We are a world-renowned institute and we cannot tolerate such actions.”
“All we know is that the meat left an abattoir in the Parisian region,” it added under the headline “The crazy affair of the GM sheep”.
France remains one of the staunchest opponents of GM research, ever since environmental protesters pressured the government into banning GM crops in the 2000s.
The European Union authorised the import and sale of 19 GM crops in April, but is likely to pass legislation allowing individual countries to block their use – in part thanks to demands from France.