Dec '00 / Jan 2001
A
Gift Given, A Gift Received: Water
to Iraq
By Edilith Eckart
Election Analysis Progressive
Directions?
By Bill Thomson
Modernizing Our Electoral Rules
&
Practices
By Rob Richie
Democracy 101
By Blair Bobier
Clean Money: Campaign Finance
Reform
By John Moyers
Book Review: The Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray & Sherry Ruth
Anderson Reviewed by
Peter Montague
Remembrance: Robert Theobald
By Bob Stilger
Transforming Our Dreaming
By Josˇ Stevens
Democracy and the Airwaves
By Suzi Aufderheide
StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins
The US Is Warned "Wake Up
To Global Warming Threat"
By Environmental News Service
U.S. Position Threatens to
Derail Climate Change Negotiations
By Cat Lazaroff
Martin Luther King, Jr: Global and
Social Shaman
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore
A Pagan Speak to Jesus
By John Darling
Cosmic Calendar
By Salina Rain
StarLink:
More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins
"Agricultural biotechnology will find a supporter occupying the White
House next year, regardless of which candidate wins the election in November
·" Monsanto Corporation's electronic newsletter at www.monsanto.com,
10/06/00
The Gene Giants suffered a serious setback last September when the Genetically
Engineered Food Alert coalition (GEFA) revealed that an illegal, likely allergenic
variety (Cry9C) of genetically engineered corn called StarLink had been detected
in a major US consumer food product, Kraft taco shells. The GE Food Alert
Coalition, which tested the taco shells and broke the news about StarLink,
is made up of seven US groups, Friends of the Earth, Organic Consumers Association,
Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, Institute for Agriculture
and Trade Policy, National Environmental Trust, and the US Public Interest
Research Group.
The StarLink scandal made headlines, generated thousands of news articles
and TV clips, and brought home the realization to American consumers that
the nation's supermarkets are filled with an extensive inventory of untested,
unlabeled, genetically engineered foods. In 1998 the US Environmental Protection
Agency had approved the commercial cultivation of StarLink-corn spliced with
a powerful Bt toxin (bacillus thuringiensis). Developed by a subsidiary of
the French-German biotech conglomerate Aventis, StarLink was approved only
for animal feed because of fears that this controversial Cry9C variety (50
to100 times more potent than other Bt-spliced varieties) could set off food
allergies in humans.
Critics of Genetically Engineered food have warned for years that splicing
foreign proteins into common food products-proteins which in most cases humans
have never eaten before-can set off dangerous food allergies with symptoms
ranging from fever, rashes, and diarrhea to anaphylactic shock and sudden
death. The FDA admits that eight percent of all US children are now plagued
by food allergies, and that the situation is growing worse. Nutritionists
also warn of a suspected link between food allergies and asthma. Even the
staid New England Journal of Medicine warned in its March 14, 1996 issue that
unlabeled genetically engineered foods are "uncertain, unpredictable,
and untestable."
In 1996, a gene-altered
soybean spliced with Brazil nut DNA patented by what is now Dupont's seed
subsidiary, Pioneer Hi-Bred, was pulled off the market before commercialization
after researchers learned that it could set off a deadly allergy in humans.
Even after this near-disaster, Plant Genetic Systems, the developer of StarLink
corn (PGS was later bought out by Aventis), apparently continued gene-splicing
Brazil Nut DNA into rapeseed, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and peas in European
field tests in the open environment.
The biotech industry, Kraft/Phillip Morris, and the EPA at first tried to
deny the validity of the GEFA lab tests, but within days public pressure forced
Kraft, the largest food corporation in America, to recall 2.5 million boxes
of the corn tacos. This action was followed by a halt of sales of Cry9C seeds
by Aventis, and a formal recall order issued by the USDA on all 350,000 acres
of StarLink corn planted across the US. GEFA then forced further recalls (Safeway
corn taco shells, Mission Foods corn products, Western Family brand corn tacos)
by announcing that StarLink corn had been detected in other brand-name products
being sold in thousands of supermarkets. In the wake of the StarLink crisis,
some of the largest US food and animal feed processors-Kellogg, ConAgra, Archer
Daniels Midland, and Tyson-either temporarily closed their grain mills or
announced mandatory testing for Cry9C corn. Meanwhile, the White House sent
emergency teams to Japan and Europe, trying to reassure major US trading partners
that the StarLink controversy would be kept under control.
By the end of
October, consumer confidence in the safety of GE foods was severely shaken.
Thousands of farmers and grain elevator operators expressed anger at Aventis
and the biotech industry. The state Attorney General's office in Iowa criticized
Aventis and seed dealers for not telling farmers to keep StarLink out of the
human food chain. As one Iowa grain elevator operator told the Washington
Post, "I think we're just hitting the tip of the iceberg here. We just
don't know what's in those elevators, and when we start letting this stuff
go and it's tested, it's going to get worse."
Aventis, Kraft, Safeway, Mission Foods, Western Family, Shaw's, Food Lion,
Randalls, Kroger, Albertson's, H.E.B., and scores of other food companies
and supermarket chains (not to mention grain elevators and farmers) have begun
totaling up several hundred million dollars in losses. Consumers claiming
to have been poisoned by StarLink corn products filed a multi-million dollar
class-action suit in Chicago. Kraft and a number of supermarket chains have
voiced dissatisfaction with the lack of oversight of GE crops by US regulatory
agencies.
The EPA is caught between a rock and a hard place: Fending off pressure by
the biotech industry to reverse itself and declare that Cry9C corn is safe
for humans, and resisting pressure from public interest groups to take all
of the nation's Bt crops-corn, cotton, potatoes, and soybeans-off the market
because of their evermore obvious hazards. Meanwhile, America's overseas allies
are trying to figure out what to do about the growing demand on the part of
consumers in their own countries to close the door on billions of dollars
of GE-tainted US agricultural imports.
The US announcement on Oct. 27 that they would let Archer Daniels Midland,
Cargill, ConAgra and other grain exporters ship StarLink-contaminated corn
to international markets only made matters worse. In effect the grain cartel
and the White House were telling America's best overseas customers: Here,
take this contaminated corn. Americans are refusing to eat this stuff, Tyson
Foods, the largest poultry producer in the US, won't even feed it to their
chickens, but you can eat it.
The fallout and
collateral damage from the StarLink scandal will likely continue. As the New
York Times stated on Oct. 17, Aventis may be hit with a barrage of lawsuits:
"Just what farmers knew and when they knew it could end up playing a
role in lawsuits growing out of the affair, according to lawyers who handle
agriculture cases. Aventis and the seed companies might have a hard time fending
off liability for the expenses of farmers, grain elevators, millers and food
companies in sorting out the mess if they did not do enough to head off foreseeable
risks that mixing would occur."
The appalling lack of US government regulation and the greed of so-called
Life Science corporations to rush untested, and in this case, likely dangerous
products to market have now become obvious, even in the heartland of agbiotech,
the United States. Polls taken before the StarLink scandal broke showed that
the majority of Americans and Canadians were already opposed to genetically
engineered foods, while an overwhelming majority support mandatory labeling,
mainly so that they can avoid buying these controversial foods. US farmers,
and even a number of large food corporations, have already begun cutting back
on their use of GE seeds or food ingredients. While 33% of US corn acreage
was GE last year, this year it fell to 19.5%. Whether or not the StarLink
debacle represents a mortal blow to the first generation of GE foods and crops
remains to be seen. Certainly a review of recent global developments indicates
that the crisis of credibility surrounding genetically engineered foods is
steadily increasing.
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