Madrid, Sept 29 - Spain's Ebro Puleva, one of the world's biggest rice processors, said on Friday it suspended rice imports from the United States in August over fears that shipments contained genetically-modified grain.
"Rice imports from the United States were stopped in August when we knew there were transgenic grains that are banned in Europe," an Ebro spokeswoman said.
"The decision was taken at the end of August (and will last) until the situation is normalised."
"We are importing from other countries, except for China, which also uses transgenic seeds," she said.
No biotech rice is allowed to be grown, sold or marketed on the territory of the European Union's 25 countries.
In August, the European Commission tightened rules governing imports of U.S. long-grain rice to prove the absence of the LL Rice 601 strain, which it said was marketed by Germany's Bayer AG and produced in the United States.
Its decision followed the discovery by U.S. authorities of trace amounts of the GMO rice, engineered to resist a herbicide, in long-grain samples that were targeted for commercial use.