Who Wants 50 Million Bushels of Gene-Altered Corn?

Larry Bohlen had just one item on his shopping list when he went to the Silver Spring, Md., Safeway this summer--corn.

Everything Bohlen put in his cart had corn in it. He tossed in corn chips, corn meal, corn flakes. By the end of his monomaniacal shopping spree, he had collected 23 products containing corn.

It wasn’t a craving that motivated Bohlen; it was a hunch. He bet he could prove a genetically engineered crop that has not been approved for human consumption had reached America’s supermarket shelves.

Bohlen took the groceries back to his office at the environmental group Friends of the Earth and packed them into six cardboard boxes. Then he mailed them to Genetic ID, a laboratory in Fairfield, Iowa. At the lab, technicians methodically crumbled the groceries into powder, then did $7,000 worth of genetic tests.

On Sept. 18, Bohlen released the findings at a news conference convened by Genetically Engineered Food Alert, a coalition of environmental and consumer groups: The tests had found traces of a genetically engineered variety called StarLink in taco shells made by Kraft Foods. StarLink, Bohlen explained, is not approved for human consumption because of concerns that eating it might cause allergic reactions.

That’s when the trouble started. Bohlen’s stroll through the neighborhood Safeway three months ago has paralyzed a whole sector of American agriculture, diverting grain shipments from their destinations, jeopardizing exports of U.S. corn and threatening consumer confidence in the safety of genetically modified foods.

In some places, thanks to Bohlen, it has become difficult to locate a yellow corn tortilla.

By tracing backward from the Silver Spring Safeway, Kraft soon determined that the troublesome corn had been grown during the 1999 season and milled at a plant in Plainview, Texas. Officials at the plant said they had no idea where the unapproved corn came from.

A frenzied recall ensued. Grocers pulled Kraft taco shells and tortilla chips off the shelves, and then, as other companies discovered StarLink in their products, more recalls went out. Mission Foods, the country’s largest manufacturer of tortilla products, recalled nearly 300 products. By Sept. 26, Aventis, the biotechnology company that developed StarLink, suspended sales of the technology to seed companies.

But by then, this year’s StarLink crop, more than 300,000 acres’ worth, stood waiting to be harvested. Some farmers were already hauling it to grain elevators.

Even though StarLink amounted to one-200th of the corn grown in the United States this year, that tiny amount tainted billions of bushels. One expert estimated that half of Iowa’s corn crop would end up mixed with StarLink.

Giant food processors including Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra began testing incoming shipments for StarLink, turning away whole rail cars of corn.

By November, StarLink corn began showing up in grain shipments to Japan, where, surveys show, public suspicion of genetically engineered crops is greater than in the United States. Exports to Japan, the largest foreign market for U.S. corn, suddenly dropped more than 50%, according to federal figures. South Korea, the second largest consumer of U.S. corn, banned it outright.

Citing the accidental export of StarLink, Aventis’ competitor Monsanto announced last week that it would limit sales of one genetically modified corn variety and postpone selling another until the varieties have been approved by Japan and the European Union.

It had become clear that procedures intended to keep StarLink out of the food supply had broken down. But things got even messier when the Garst Seed Co. announced that one of its corn hybrids contained the StarLink gene even though it wasn’t supposed to. The company is still investigating how the mistake occurred.

EPA Stalled Approval Over Digestion Worries

None of this was supposed to happen. When EPA approved StarLink for sale, the company that developed it swore the variety would be kept out of the human food supply.

AgrEvo, which became part of Aventis about a year ago, first submitted StarLink for EPA approval in September 1997. AgrEvo had genetically engineered the strain to synthesize its own natural pesticide, making the corn resistant to several destructive insects.

EPA had already approved several corn strains genetically modified to make the same type of chemical, but this time the agency balked. Tests showed that the StarLink insecticide was resistant to digestion in the human stomach. Indigestibility is common among food allergens; and an EPA scientific advisory panel worried that after prolonged exposure, some people might become allergic to StarLink.

AgrEvo agreed to do more tests. But meanwhile, the company proposed, why not approve it for feeding animals and making ethanol? That would minimize human health concerns and allow the company to sell StarLink for the 90% of the U.S. corn production that does not go into human food.

EPA agreed, as long as the company took responsibility for keeping StarLink out of the human food supply. In January 1999 AgrEvo submitted a detailed plan in a letter to the agency.

Jeff Lacina, a spokesman for the Garst Seed Co., said it informed all 3,500 of its dealers about the rules governing StarLink. And Sharon Greif, a Garst dealer in Linn County, Iowa, said she received that information and would have passed it to any customers who purchased the seed.

But there were some slip-ups, said some farmers interviewed by the Associated Press, including Jim Norton of Clarksville, Iowa. Norton said this spring that a seed salesman showed up at his farm, peddling new corn varieties, including StarLink.

The man never said anything about human consumption, Norton said, and Norton didn’t ask. Why should he? No other corn variety, genetically modified or not, is approved for animal but not human consumption.

Norton planted the StarLink on 108 of his 500 acres.

Later, under pressure from the federal government, Aventis tried to buy back corn it sold. By late October, the company had managed to account for 98.5% of this year’s crop, most of which was in storage on farms where it was grown.

The EPA has said it will decide by the end of the year on a new Aventis request to allow StarLink to be used for human consumption.

Meanwhile, farmers all over the Midwest have about 50 million bushels of StarLink corn sitting on their farms, and no idea what they should do with it.