Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety Read Online Free PDF

“registration”—a planting license—for StarLink corn. Because company data indicated that the StarLink Cry9C
Bt
protein toxin appeared similar in structure to proteins known to cause human allergies, the EPA did something unprecedented: it issued a limited registration. The agency licensed AgrEvo to grow StarLink corn, but
only
for animal feed or industrial purposes.
    Following approval, plantings of StarLink increased rapidly. Farmers grew the corn on about 10,000 acres in 1998, 250,000 acres in 1999, and 300,000 acres in 2000—still just a small fraction of the 80 million U.S. acres planted with corn in any given year. 4
    Once harvested, StarLink corn soon worked its way into the food production and distribution system. Figure 2 , which illustrates the principal components of the StarLink food chain, immediately reveals why the question, “how did StarLink get into the human food supply?” is not the one to ask. The real question is how it could possibly have been kept out.
    The chain of production begins with Aventis CropScience, the owner of the StarLink technology at the time the gene appeared in taco shells. Aventis does not sell seeds; it licenses the technology to seed companies to grow the plants. In this case, Garst Seeds was the principal (but not the only) licensed company. Garst, in turn, sold StarLink seeds to about 2,500 farmers who grew the corn throughout the Midwest, mainly (40%) in Iowa. The farmers harvested the corn and transported it to about 350 grain elevators. From the elevators, corn seeds traveled to Azteca Milling in Plainview, Texas, to be converted into corn flour. In turn, the flour traveled to Mexico (and other places) to be made into taco shells and corn products distributed throughout the world. Corn plants look alike, and corn seeds are either yellow or white. StarLink is yellow corn and looks no different from any other yellow corn. Unless StarLink is carefully segregated from other varieties, it can easily become mixed with conventional corn at any stage of production—in the fields or in trucks, grain elevators, or processing plants.
    During the summer of 2000, Larry Bohlen of Friends of the Earth, one of the groups participating in Genetically Engineered Food Alert, learned that neither the growers of StarLink nor the owners of grain elevators were making any special effort to segregate the genetically modified corn from conventional varieties. He knew of a test developed by GeneticID, a company in Iowa, that could identify “foreign” genes in genetically modified foods. Using that test, Friends of the Earth examined corn products on supermarket shelves and hit the jackpot with the shells made by Taco Bell (owned by Kraft Foods, then a division of Philip Morris). Further testing revealed signs of the StarLink gene in other foods: vegetarian corn dogs, seed corn from conventionally grown plants, seeds from other types of genetically modified corn, corn shipped to Japan, and white as well as yellow corn. Because StarLink was not permitted in these products, it would have to be removed—a challenging and costly process involving product recalls, purchases of stored corn, closures of manufacturing plants, testing of samples, legal fees, bail-out funds, loss of sales, lost jobs, lost exports, and, eventually, judgments in class-action lawsuits. Not least, the StarLink affair contributed to further loss of confidence in the food biotechnology industry and in the ability of government agencies to protect the public by regulating genetically modified foods.

    FIGURE 1. The multinational origins of Aventis CropScience, owner of the genetic engineering technology for StarLink corn in 2000, when its gene “illegally” appeared in supermarket taco shells. Bayer (
Germany
) bought Aventis CropScience in 2002.

    FIGURE 2. The chain of production, distribution, and marketing of StarLink corn through the food system in 2000. Square boxes contain the principal elements in this chain.