Grower having trouble tracking altered corn 

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and wire reports 20oct00

Local agriculturalists say they haven't heard of problems at area grain elevators with corn for animal feed being mixed with specialty corn for human consumption.

But northeast Indiana residents may not be in the clear, based on mounting concerns that genetically engineered corn linked to a nationwide recall of taco shells may have spread farther than expected into the human food supply.

The grain's developer said Thursday it was uncertain it will ever retrieve the entire crop.

Roger Moll, Allen County Purdue Extension director, said area farmers and elevator operators have known for a long time that corn for animals and that for humans must be kept separate, and so growers and buyers have kept the two separate.

Most northeast Indiana corn farmers grow animal feed corn, which has an insecticide engineered into its seed to kill pests, such as the European corn bore.

Grain elevators can test corn to determine whether it is feed corn or corn for human consumption, according to Gonzalee Martin, the Allen County agriculture educator for the Purdue Extension Service.

Nationally, about 9 million bushels of the corn in question have not been accounted for, said officials with Aventis CropScience, which developed the engineered grain called StarLink.

"Obviously, we're going to do everything we can to try and track it down. With 100 percent absolute certainty it's hard to know" whether the missing corn will be found, Aventis spokesman Rick Rountree said.

Cory Pearl, commodity manager at Central Soya in Decatur, said corn is not separated by the company because only corn for purposes other than human consumption is purchased there. He also said StarLink is not accepted at Central Soya.

The StarLink corn found in taco shells was traced to a single mill in Texas. Aventis has since tracked StarLink to a variety of locations.

Among the corn products that reached grocery stores are taco shells, corn chips and breakfast cereals.

StarLink was approved only for animal feed or industrial uses because scientists were unsure about its potential to cause allergic reactions. Federal officials say the health risk is remote.