New Worries of Planting Altered Corn

Elizabeth Becker / New York Times 2mar00

WASHINGTON, March 1  — The Agriculture Department asked today for an accounting of the amount of seed corn tainted with a genetically engineered variety of corn that caused a nationwide recall of food products last year.

In continuing tests at the request of the department, seed companies are finding fresh traces of StarLink, the genetically modified corn made by Aventis CropScience, in small amounts of seed meant for sale to farmers, government and industry officials said today.

Angela Dansby, spokeswoman for the American Seed Trade Association, said, "Our members have been doing tests for StarLink since last fall and, yes, they have found new traces."

With spring planting approaching, the government and the food industry said they had hoped to prevent farmers from using seed corn contaminated with StarLink, which had been approved for animal feed but had not been approved human consumption because of concerns that it might cause allergic reactions.

The contamination caused a costly disruption in the nation's grain-handling system and forced the recall of more than 300 kinds of corn chips, taco shells and other foods.

After a meeting today of representatives of the seed and food industry and the government agencies overseeing biotechnology for agriculture, Ms. Dansby said the trade association had agreed to canvas its 200 members and find out how many bags of seed were contaminated and the value of that seed.

She said the Agriculture Department wanted the results by Friday.

Kevin Herglotz, the department spokesman, said: "We've urged the seed companies to test and monitor the seed for StarLink. We've urged the farmers to request verification that their seed is not contaminated."

Mr. Herglotz said today's gathering was part of a series of meetings established last year by Dan Glickman, the agriculture secretary, to contain the spread of seed contaminated by StarLink.

Last autumn, the government prodded Aventis into starting a $100 million program to buy as much of the StarLink harvest as possible, and now nearly every major food and agriculture company is testing for Cry9C, the protein produced by StarLink.

In November, Aventis offered to help seed companies test and screen for StarLink contamination, and the companies agreed.

Agricultural officials said today that although it was unclear how the seed became tainted, many suspected cross-pollination. Keeping StarLink segregated — field to factory to consumer — from corn that is meant for human consumption has proved difficult, officials say.

"There's no structure to keep the StarLink corn separate from other corn," said Charles Hurburgh, a professor of agricultural engineering at Iowa State University. "The source of the contamination is likely to be crosspollination, where a field is pollinated by StarLink corn from faraway fields."

Mr. Hurburgh estimated that less than 5 percent of the corn seed — or about one million bags — would have to be taken off the market.

To the relief of officials, that seed had yet to be sold to farmers, much less sold to countries with more stringent regulation of genetically modified agricultural products.

Japan, one of the largest markets for American corn, rejected shipments in January after finding traces of the genetically modified corn. Japan imports about 4 million tons of corn for foods intended for humans and 12 million tons of corn for animal feed.

"I do not expect that this will have any impact on our overseas sales," said Val Giddings, vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "The companies have enormous incentive to test and know it won't be sent overseas."