Corn Maker Agrees to Stop Sale Until OK for Human Use

Bowing to public pressure, the developer of the controversial type of gene-altered corn found in Taco Bell brand taco shells said Tuesday it will halt sales of the corn until it is approved for human consumption by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmentalists, food manufacturers and even biotechnology proponents have called for a ban on genetically altered crops that haven’t been cleared for use in food. They say it’s too easy for such crops to wind up in the food supply because most of the country’s grain elevators and trucks don’t segregate them from conventional crops.

StarLink, which contains a genetically engineered pesticide, was approved for animal feed corn in 1998 but not for human use because it contains a protein that may be difficult for humans to digest. It is the only crop to receive a partial or conditional approval.

North Carolina-based Aventis CropScience, which licenses StarLink corn to seed companies, has been under pressure from the National Corn Growers Assn. to pull it off the market. Aventis said it has asked seed companies that license StarLink to stop selling it.

But the company believes it can gain full approval for StarLink from the EPA, which regulates the use of genetically modified ingredients that are used as pesticides. Aventis officials say they are working with regulators to determine which tests need to be done before it can be cleared for human consumption. Before approving StarLink for human consumption, the EPA would need the Food and Drug Administration’s agreement that it is safe in food.

“The events of last week have nothing to do with allergenic risk,” said Aventis spokesman Rick Rountree. “We think [StarLink] has a lot of potential in the coming years.”

EPA officials say they are considering ending the practice of granting partial crop approvals as part of a review of its policies for dealing with engineered crops. If it does that it would only approve genetically modified crops that pass muster for human consumption.

It also is reviewing the individual licenses granted thus far for genetically altered Bt corn and cotton.

That could mean requiring third-party testing or testing by its own laboratories to ensure the safety of a product before it receives approval.

Licenses for eight genetically altered corn varieties and one type of bioengineered cotton will expire next year and they will not be extended until the EPA decides how it will deal with these relatively new types of crops, said Stephen Johnson, deputy administrator for the EPA’s office of prevention, pesticides and toxic substances.

The Taco Bell recall, the first ever recall of a food that contained genetically altered ingredients, called attention to how ill-equipped regulatory agencies are to deal with the proliferation of genetically altered crops. The FDA, for example, does not have a laboratory set up to test for these ingredients in processed food.

“If something is broken in the system, it needs to be fixed,” said Lisa Dry, spokeswoman for the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “It’s critical to maintaining consumer confidence in biotechnology.”

Food manufacturers such as the Kraft Foods unit of Philip Morris, which distributed the Taco Bell taco shells in supermarkets, are also calling for other measures to ensure the safety of the food supply as more bioengineered crops hit the market, such as mandatory premarket review by the FDA, an action the FDA had originally proposed this spring.