French pharmaceutical and agricultural company Aventis has responded to the US debacle surrounding Kraft’s taco shells by halting the sales of its genetically modified corn, the first move of its kind among biotechnology firms. Seeds of the StarLink corn it engineered will not be sold to the US until the government has agreed that it is safe for human consumption.
Last Friday (22 September) witnessed Kraft Foods embark on an embarrassing recall of millions of taco shells from US supermarkets, after independent laboratory tests confirmed the suspicions of an anti-biotechnology pressure group who believed that consumers may be buying food that contained GM corn not approved for human consumption. Federal regulators are still unsure how the illegal mix-up occurred at the mill used to process the taco shells, and other food products, and Aventis stressed that its decision hoped to reassure consumers that StarLink would not reach the food chain.
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Rick Rountree, spokesman for Aventis, commented that the decision was made because: “It isn’t in our interest to sell corn seed if it is causing confusion.”
Concerns that StarLink may be a food allergen
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed in 1998 that StarLink could be used in livestock feed and ethanol fuel, but concern was raised then about its potential as an allergen. It is the only GM corn crop out of 40 to be banned from human consumption.
StarLink has been engineered to internally create the toxic protein Cry9C, which acts as an insecticide. It still looks identical to normal corn, however, and the contamination incident also highlighted the lack of an adequate test for corn producers and food manufacturers to detect the presence of GMOs. Also, while the EPA has dictated a minimum separating distance of 660 feet between StarLink fields and other cornfields, organic farmers have expressed concern that GM pollen drift from the 315,000 acres across the US that are farmed with StarLink may well be reaching their land.
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By GlobalDataOthers however, doubt that the taco shells were ever infected. Biotechnology experts and food companies have pointed out that with testing as primitive as it is, experiments conducted on the same corn sample can result in contradictory conclusions about whether it is contaminated with StarLink.
Decision will not impact Aventis financially…
Aventis, which last year grossed revenue of US$20.7bn, is not expected to feel much negative impact from its decision over StarLink. The licensing of the gene generated only around $1m this year and the company’s shares value on the NY bourse increased by 44 cents to $74.44 each.
…but it will provide pressure groups with ammunition
Anti-biotechnology groups campaigning for mandatory labels on food products that contain GMOs have meanwhile seen last week’s events as a step towards victory. The majority of food companies oppose such a scheme but the recent unprecedented actions of Kraft, in calling for tighter regulations on biotechnology, and of Aventis, in freezing sales of its GE corn, have somewhat vindicated the sceptical stance of pressure groups over GMOs. In a senate hearing yesterday (26 September), pressure groups lobbied the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to tighten regulation and Michael Hansen, from the Consumers Union, noted that: “It is not lost on consumers that the problem was discovered not by the FDA or EPA, but by Friends of the Earth.”
