Topeka ? Ventria Bioscience has been given permission to grow genetically modified rice near Junction City despite national opposition led by a rural advocate from Douglas County.

Dan Nagengast, executive director of the Kansas Rural Center, said the state’s violent weather increased the chance that genetically engineered plants could be swept away to contaminate other crops.

“Why grow these crops in wide-open nature, when other companies have found it possible to use genetic engineering techniques to produce biotech drugs in confined settings where food contamination is not an issue?” Nagengast asked.

But state and federal officials maintain that the process is safe.

Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky said Friday he has visited Ventria Bioscience operations in North Carolina and was pleased with the company’s performance there.

“I’m certainly in agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their assessment is correct,” he said.

On Thursday, the federal Agriculture Department gave Sacramento, Calif.-based Ventria permission to plant up to 3,200 acres of the rice, engineered to contain human proteins.

Ventria President and CEO Scott Deeter said the company would try to grow the rice on about 250 acres this year, considering the late start this planting season.

“We’ll start planting this week,” Deeter said. “It’s still possible for us to get a good crop in Kansas this year.”

Ventria plans to harvest and refine proteins from the rice for use in pharmaceutical drugs to fight diarrhea and dehydration, which kill millions of people in developing nations each year.

Kansas officials, including Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, support the plan as part of a grander scheme to expand the state’s bioscience industry.

“This is good news for our state and children across the country,” Sebelius said in a statement.

No commercial rice is grown in Kansas, but rice growers remain concerned about possible contamination of rice crops in other states from weather events like tornadoes or mishandling during the harvesting process.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said it received 20,034 comments about Ventria’s project, with just 29 comments in favor and 20,005 against. More than 18,000 of the negative comments were nearly identical letters submitted by public interest groups, the USDA said.

In addition to the Kansas Rural Center, the Center for Food Safety and the Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering objected to the Ventria deal.

“About two weeks ago, I was huddled with other travelers in a rest stop on Interstate 70 as tornadoes were reported on the ground in the very area where Ventria proposes to expand their production between Junction City and Topeka,” Nagengast said.

“I also question whether the company has adequately engineered their water control systems to deal with the amounts of torrential rainfall that are quite common here. This just represents an unconscionable food safety complication in a food-producing region,” he said.