Bio corn contamination a costly headache for U.S. firms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The controversy over the safety of a gene-spliced U.S. corn widened Wednesday as the maker of the corn, French firm Aventis SA, urged U.S. regulators to grant a four-year grace period to allow the existing supply to wind its way through the food chain.

But Japan, the biggest overseas buyer of U.S. corn, urged U.S. officials to act swiftly to halt exports of food products containing the controversial corn, called StarLink. A Japanese consumer group said it found the corn in a baking mix and in animal feed.

StarLink has not been approved by U.S. regulators for human consumption. The corn also is illegal for U.S. firms to export for any use.

The Japanese news sent jitters through the Chicago Board of Trade, where corn futures contracts closed lower Wednesday on worries that Japan might take its business elsewhere.

The European Union, which buys small amounts of raw corn from U.S. exporters, has set up a 24-hour desk to monitor the situation, a spokeswoman with the European Commission said.

During the past three weeks, most major U.S. grocery stores have already pulled taco shells and tortillas suspected of contamination with StarLink. ConAgra Foods Inc. and Kellogg Co. are among the many U.S. food makers that have been forced to halt production lines and launch widespread testing for the corn.

On Wednesday, a coalition of U.S. environmental groups said its tests showed the corn had also surfaced in taco shells made by Western Family Foods. The company, based in Portland, Oregon, said it had already quietly withdrawn the product from the market.

Aventis fought back by submitting new scientific data to U.S. regulators to bolster its case that the gene-spliced corn is safe to eat.

The company asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to allow a four-year grace period or "tolerance" for existing StarLink corn to be completely harvested, processed and consumed.

Aventis said its latest safety assessment showed that the gene-spliced corn was digested as readily as other foods. Mice fed StarLink during a 30-day study showed no signs of rashes, diarrhea or other allergic reactions, the company said in its 75-page submission.

In comparing StarLink to known allergens such as peanuts, the corn has a "more than adequate margin of safety," Aventis said. The corn's protein -- known to scientists as Cry9C --"shows no potential to adversely impact individuals who currently suffer from food allergy," Aventis said.

The EPA has refused to allow StarLink in human food, saying there are unanswered questions about whether the corn may cause rashes, diarrhea, or other allergic reactions in some people.

The EPA said it would appoint a panel of scientists to review the new data, and give the food industry, green groups, consumers and others a chance to give their views.

"One thing we will not do is compromise our process, its credibility and integrity to make a judgment on this," Mike McCabe, EPA deputy administrator, said in an interview.

In submitting the new data, Aventis said it was seeking a "time-limited exemption" from the EPA that would okay StarLink for use in human food for a set time period -- whether a few months or several years -- so that any commingled corn can move through the food supply.

But that exemption would be granted only if the EPA is convinced that StarLink poses no human health risk.

A time-limited exemption, which was originally sought by Aventis in 1997 "is still on the table," McCabe said. "We haven't removed any possible alternative from the toolbox that we have to deal with this issue."

Meanwhile, Aventis is still trying to scoop up millions of bushels of StarLink that remain unaccounted for.

The company has offered to buy all of this year's crop from farmers at market price plus a 25 cent per bushel premium. In the documents given to EPA, Aventis estimated that at most, some 9.6 million bushels of StarLink had filtered into the human food supply.

Although StarLink was grown on only about one percent of all U.S. cornfields this year, the harvested corn was apparently commingled by farmers and grain elevators.

The chaos in the U.S. food and grain industry and potential threat to U.S. farm exports has also unleashed concern in Congress.

Senior officials with the EPA, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department were scheduled to testify on Thursday morning before a new Senate biotech caucus meeting. Senators Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and Tim Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican, said they wanted to hear whether U.S. biotech regulations need to be changed.

The FDA has promised to issue proposed regulations this autumn that would require biotech food makers like Aventis to hold mandatory consultations with agency scientists before winning approval for new products.

Environmental groups have complained that the planned changes do not go far enough, and should include mandatory labelling of foods containing gene-altered ingredients. Most European nations, Japan, South Korea, Australia and other nations have adopted strict labelling laws.

The biotech industry maintains that long-standing U.S. regulations recognize gene-spliced foods as substantially equivalent to conventional ones, and that stricter rules are not needed.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Aventis - CropScience
USDA Agricultural Biotechnology

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