Japan consumer group says finds StarLink corn 

Jae Hur / Reuters 25oct00

Tokyo, Japan - A Japanese consumer group said on Wednesday it had found StarLink, a bio-engineered variety of corn not approved for human consumption, in some food and animal feed sold in the domestic market. The Consumers Union of Japan said at a press briefing that the corn was found in tests on Tuesday on imported meal.

It said the meal was in a product called "Homemade Baking" sold by unlisted food company Kyoritsu Shokuhin.

The group is asking the health and agriculture ministries to recall the food and will seek a suspension of imports of genetically modified (GM) crops, union officials said.

StarLink and another variety of corn not approved in Japan were also found in a test on April 20, it said. The StarLink in that test was found in Kashima, near Tokyo, in poultry feed.

StarLink, made by European pharmaceutical giant Aventis SA, is approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use only as an animal feed because of unanswered questions about whether it could affect people with allergies.

In Japan, StarLink is not approved even for animal feed.

The consumer group, which has 6,000 members, asked Genetic ID Japan, a unit of U.S.-based Genetic ID, to test for the corn.

In the United States, stores and supermarkets have removed items found to contain StarLink from their shelves, and production lines have been disrupted at food processors as worries about the gene-altered corn spread.

The food recall in the U.S. market has raised concerns about the United States' ability to comply with Japanese legislation to be implemented from next April that will set zero tolerance for imports of unapproved farm products, traders said.

Before the claim made by the consumer group on Wednesday, concerns had been growing among Japanese importers over talk that a 55,000-tonne cargo of U.S. corn had been rejected because it contained StarLink.

Traders had said its discovery in corn shipments would send shock waves through importers in Japan as well as other Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan.

Japan imports 15-16 million tonnes of corn per year for food and feed, mostly from the United States, and South Korea buys about eight million tonnes.