By James Cox
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20001027/2787692s.htm
ARCADIA, Iowa -- Ground zero in the nationwide controversy over bio-engineered StarLink corn is the grain elevator on U.S. Highway 30 outside this western Iowa town.
The Arcadia elevator buys grain from farmers in Crawford and Carroll counties, the places with the largest and fourth-largest harvests of StarLink this fall.
StarLink is a touchy subject around here, but its sensitivity has little to do with questions about the safety of biotech crops or the foods that contain them. It has everything to do with grain prices, potential lawsuits and the massive disruption StarLink has caused to the nation's grain distribution system.
''The debate over biotechnology ended here two years ago,'' says David Leiting, general manager of the Arcadia elevator. ''I don't know any farmer who's 100% into conventional seed anymore.''
The month-old StarLink crisis has intensified this week. The corn showed up Wednesday in more supermarket-brand taco shells and may have popped up in grain exported to Japan. Now Aventis CropScience, the French-owned company that developed the corn, wants federal regulators to grant temporary approval for use of the corn in food so the hunt for missing StarLink doesn't paralyze grain distribution or lead to more food recalls.
If anything, the enthusiasm of Corn Belt farmers for genetically modified (GM) seed may help explain the crisis that began last month with the discovery of StarLink in several brands of supermarket taco shells.
Unlike other types of GM corn, StarLink has not won federal approval for human consumption. Farmers growing it were required to sign agreements pledging to take steps to keep it out of the food supply by channeling the grain to animal feed and industrial uses such as ethanol. Some growers appear to have been lax.
''People have become blasé'' about genetically altered crops since they entered wide use in the mid-1990s, says Mark Griesch, a Nebraska sales manager for Garst Seed, an Iowa seed producer believed to have sold the most StarLink.
StarLink entered the market in 1998. Since then, farmers who have bought the seed from Griesch's sales team have gotten 14 to 17 oral or written warnings about it, he says.
Ultimately, ''this was not a big deal to them. No. 2 yellow corn is No. 2 yellow corn. After growing it for three years, you start taking it for granted,'' he says.
Midwest farmers have become huge converts to biotech corn and soybeans. They pay up to 35% more for seed implanted with genes that kill bugs, cut down on the need for powerful herbicides and reduce the number of times they need to till their fields.
''A lot of guys thought, 'Well, if all the other (biotech corn) is OK for human consumption, why wouldn't StarLink be?' '' says Brent Sebade, an Emerson, Neb., farmer who grew 900 acres of StarLink. Sebade feeds his corn to the 4,000 cattle that he and his brother raise. But he has no qualms about it. ''I'd eat this corn right out of the field, wouldn't even faze me.''
What is StarLink?
Like other GM corn, StarLink is implanted with a soil bacterium that kills a destructive bug called the corn borer. Unlike some other GM corn, it also contains implanted genes that allow it to stand up to two popular weed-killing chemicals.
StarLink had federal approval for use as livestock feed and in non-food industrial products. But regulators weren't sure whether people should eat it because it contains a special protein, Cry9C, that is slow to break down in the digestive system and could theoretically cause allergic reactions.
There are no reports of anyone getting ill from StarLink. Aventis says StarLink's presence in the food supply is a regulatory problem, not a public health threat. The StarLink that showed up in tests of taco shells is believed to be corn from the 1999 or 1998 harvests, suggesting some consumers may have already eaten it without getting sick.
Wednesday, Aventis asked the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily approve StarLink for human consumption so the missing grain can work its way through the food chain over the next four years. The EPA says it will review new scientific data from Aventis but won't rush to a decision.
How was StarLink found in food?
The tests were commissioned by anti-biotechnology groups. They revealed the presence of StarLink in shells made by Mission Foods, a Texas company that manufactures for Safeway, Kraft and others.
''Corn is a liquid commodity,'' Leiting says. ''It gets on a train and goes thousands of miles. It's traded two or three times while it's being loaded and shipped.''
In Japan, where there is a ban on StarLink for any use, a consumer group said Wednesday that it found the corn in baking mix and animal feed. Those reports jolted futures markets because Japan is the leading foreign buyer of U.S. corn. The 15-nation European Union has said it is monitoring shipments of U.S. grain.
Who grew it and how is it being tracked?
An estimated 2,000 farmers in 29 states planted StarLink on 341,000 acres last spring. Since late September, Aventis representatives have raced across the country to find it, working with Garst and other seedmakers to identify farmers who planted the corn.
Aventis says it has located 88% of the StarLink harvest and contained it on farms where it was grown. The company is still hunting for 9 million bushels, equivalent to 0.09% of the overall U.S. corn harvest.
Aventis has hired ConAgra, the Omaha-based grain handler, to find feedlots, ethanol plants and other customers for the grain. That shouldn't be a problem: Most corn, 59% of the annual U.S. harvest, is fed to cattle, hogs, chickens and other animals. Another 6% goes into ethanol. The challenge is to keep it from tainting the 21% of U.S. corn that is exported, the 6% used to make high-fructose corn syrup for soft drinks and the 8% used for products from corn starch to sweeteners.
The effort has created havoc in the supply chain that starts on the farm and ends at the supermarket shelf. Farmers who lack storage space have been asked by Aventis to leave StarLink standing in the fields. Grain elevators contaminated by the corn are struggling to separate it and find customers for it. Mills and food processors such as Kellogg, ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland have been forced to shut down facilities for tests or to turn away grain. Truck, rail and barge shipments of corn are being halted, redirected and rejected.
Meanwhile, millions of bushels of non-StarLink grain have been contaminated after being mingled with the corn at rural elevators and grain terminals or downstream at mills and food-processing plants.
Elevators now are using Trait, a $575 kit, to check grain, grinding small samples and inserting test strips. In order to get test samples without tainting its milling equipment, one Iowa elevator has had to buy kitchen blenders from a local Wal-Mart.
What happens now?
Aventis has pulled StarLink from the market. The corn won't be planted next year. Garst and other seedmakers say it's unlikely they will ever again license a seed that lacks approval for human consumption.
Meanwhile, StarLink growers can feed the corn to their livestock, sell it to the government or find other buyers and deliver it to federally approved sites, such as feedlots. They will get a premium from Aventis of 25 cents a bushel, plus extra storage and transportation costs. That arrangement is complicated by two factors:
* Buffer corn. Because of drifting pollen, non-StarLink grown within 660 feet of StarLink could test positive for Cry9C protein. Aventis says it will pay the 25 cents on buffer corn, too.
Elevator managers and grain traders predict a rush to collect. Farmers whose land borders fields planted with StarLink will insist on the premium. Others may try to pass off their corn as StarLink.
''Will there be people who turn in other grain and say it's StarLink?'' Leiting asks. ''Probably.''
* Prices. Selling corn is all about timing. Prices shift daily. They vary by county and by type of corn. Today's selling price is typically below the price a farmer can get by ''forward contracting,'' or agreeing to deliver his grain at some future date.
Aventis -- along with seed dealers and cautious elevators -- risks lawsuits if farmers are prevented from selling their corn when they want to. And elevators with StarLink could sue if they are limited to the animal feed market, where grain often sells for less than the going price offered by food processors.
And not all livestock operators are eager to be outlets for StarLink. Tyson Foods recently said it would not feed the corn to its chickens.
Potential liability clearly is part of the thinking at Aventis, where StarLink-related costs could run anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion. The matter is sensitive enough that neither Aventis nor ConAgra will acknowledge that the grain giant has been hired to find markets for this year's StarLink harvest.
The Arcadia elevator is one of the few in western Iowa that doesn't have to worry about StarLink. All the grain moving through this facility is mixed with vitamins, minerals and soy meal to make hog feed, so StarLink presents no problem.
That is small consolation to those here who believe biotechnology helps preserve soil, cut down on harmful chemicals and boost yields.
''At first blush, you shrug this off and say the 25 cents is a windfall,''
says Terry Argotsinger, a local land agent who matches landowners with farmers
looking to lease acreage. ''But this is going to slow the science down and keep
us from realizing its benefits.''