Memories of a previous life

Eleven years ago in the docks of King’s Lynn myself and a colleague from the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency we’re charged with sampling a shipment of Soya beans being imported from South America. We took samples as the soya was being discharged from the ship and in the warehouses where it was being stored prior to it being cleared for transport to a baby milk production plant. What were we looking for? It was not the presence of the normal contaminants (other seed, non seed plant material, insects and fauna contaminants, soil and other inorganic material) which can be relatively easily removed during processing. We were looking for GM contaminants that cannot be removed . GM contaminants are indistinguishable for normal soya and cannot be separated or removed. The presence of any would make the imported shipment unsuitable for baby milk production.
The sample we took were tested and analysed using state of the art molecular biology tests.