US Will Subsidize Cleanup of Altered Corn 

JUSTIN GILLIS / Washington Post 26mar03

The U.S. Agriculture Department's settlement with a Texas company that mishandled gene-altered corn, portrayed three months ago as a stringent crackdown designed to send a message to other potential violators, actually, according to this story, involved a no-interest $3.5 million government loan that means American taxpayers will effectively subsidize cleanup efforts.

The story says that the payment terms, worth as much as $500,000 in interest and other savings to the company over the next three years, are contained in a document newly uncovered in government files by the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The story says that the Agriculture Department did not release the information at the time it announced the settlement with ProdiGene Inc. of College Station, Tex.

Alisa Harrison, spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, was cited as saying there was no intent to deceive the public, adding, "It wasn't that we made a conscious decision not to release it. It didn't occur to us."

But Gregory Jaffe, director of biotechnology issues at CSPI, was cited as saying he thought the government misled the public, adding, "I think there was a conscious decision to create an illusion that this was a more severe penalty than it really is. This situation strongly suggests to me that the government is going to say one thing in public and do something different to help this industry as best it can behind closed doors."

The story explains that when it outlined the settlement last fall, the government said it was fining ProdiGene $250,000 and requiring it to reimburse the cost of destroying a warehouse full of potentially adulterated soybeans in Aurora, Neb.

Buying, transporting and burning the beans ultimately cost $3.5 million. Under the arrangement Jaffe discovered recently, the government paid for the cleanup. The company is not required to begin making payments for a year, and it will have two years to pay the money in quarterly installments, owing the government no interest on either the fine or the cleanup -- totaling $3.75 million.

Harrison was further cited as saying that the Agriculture Department had little choice but to accept extended payment terms, adding that the government "took a look at their financial situation, and it was very clear that the company could not pay the fine immediately. If the company had gone bankrupt, we wouldn't have gotten anything. We would have had to foot the entire bill."