July 31, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1424

ISLAMABAD, July 30: The Indian lobby, especially in the United Kingdom, is working to change the current method of classifying Basmati rice, which might affect Pakistan Basmati rice export to European countries.

Well placed sources told Dawn on Wednesday that big rice exporters have requested the government to resist the move at every forum.

The current method to which Pakistan had agreed was based on differentiation of origin—Pakistan Basmati and Indian Basmati.

According to the exporters, the Indians were now trying to further define Basmati as “traditional” versus “non-traditional” or “hybrid varieties”.

Incidentally, the Indians claimed that except one or two of their approved Basmati varieties, all are “traditional” while the entire Basmati commercial production of Pakistan was in their opinion “hybrid varieties”.

“We must most clearly and forcefully resist any such change in the definition at any level that could eventually come for the European Commission consideration,” they warned.

They said Pakistan’s stand had been that origins define their product and not destinations.

“We have provided the Food Standard Agency (FSA) with our approved list of Basmati along with official authentic samples. We therefore, accept no comment on our Basmati while we provide no comment on Indian definition of Basmati as approved by the Indian government,” they said.

The rice exporters have also asked the government to accept the offer of the FSA of the United Kingdom to become an affiliate of their DNA Testing programme for establishing purity of Basmati rice.

The intent of DNA testing was to ensure that Basmati rice was not mixed with non-Basmati varieties.

According to the proposals submitted to the commerce ministry, a copy of which was made available to Dawn, the exporters had requested the ministry of commerce to provide immediate go ahead to the commercial counselor of Pakistan in London so that they could “work from within” to help set correctly definitions and benchmarks.

“This could also prove eventually to be the medium through which they could disprove the Indian claims of being “traditional”, they said.

Original 51 landraces as found during the research done in 1926-33 at Rice Research Station (RRS), Kala Shah Kaku, form the basis of original landrace based parentage.

The RRS, which is now in Pakistan confirmed that they have the entire original landraces seed paddy from which DNA fingerprints could be obtained.

“We could then establish relatively easily and scientifically that Indian Basmati claims of traditional are true or false,” the exporters said.

The exporters said they could also establish much conveniently that all their approved Basmati had original landrace lineage/blood for which they said it was necessary to affiliate with UK DNA testing programme.