Tons of Experimental Biotech Corn Sent To Farmers

[cherry]

Tons of experimental biotech corn inadvertently sent to farmers

By PAUL ELIAS
AP Biotechnology Writer
Mar 23, 2005

Swiss biotechnology company Syngenta AG said Tuesday it mistakenly sold to
farmers an experimental corn seed genetically engineered to resist bugs that
was never approved by U.S. regulators, bolstering critics' claims that the
industry needs tighter government scrutiny.

Hundreds of tons of the genetically engineered seeds and resulting corn crop
were shipped in the United States and overseas between 2001 and 2004.
Federal investigators said there was no health or environmental risk because
of the seed's similarity to another Syngenta product already approved for
sale and consumption.

"While there are no safety concerns, the regulatory agencies are conducting
investigations to determine the circumstances surrounding and extent of any
violations of relevant laws and regulations," said Cynthia Bergman, an
Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman. "The U.S. government is also
communicating with our major trading partners to ensure they understand
there are no food safety or environmental concerns that could affect trade."

The Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration are also
investigating, and the company faces a fine of up to $500,000, USDA
spokesman Jim Rogers said.

In trading Tuesday, U.S.-traded Syngenta shares fell 39 cents, or 1.8
percent, to close at $21.45 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has
traded in a 52-week range of $13.93 to $23.26.

Biotechnology critics say the fact that hundreds of tons of unapproved corn
were planted in open fields for four years before Syngenta acknowledged the
mistake shows that regulators and the industry can't now be trusted to keep
genetically engineered organisms from contaminating the food supply.

They also complain that current government regulations are particularly lax
once a genetically engineered crop has been approved for consumption.

Nearly half the nation's corn approved for market by the Department of
Agriculture is genetically modified, but many consumers want their groceries
to be biotechnology-free, and are willing to pay a premium for food they
trust to be organic.

Syngenta also acknowledged Tuesday that some of the unapproved corn may have
been shipped overseas to countries that allow imports of either the
genetically engineered seed or of products made with the genetically
modified corn.

The United States and the European Union are in a bitter trade dispute over
how strictly to regulate U.S. biotechnology imports. Syngenta spokeswoman
Sarah Hull would not say whether EU countries have received the unapproved
corn.

"Instead of building international confidence in genetic engineering, the
industry continues to shoot itself in the foot," said Greg Jaffe, biotech
director for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest in
Washington D.C. "It proves this technology is hard to control and we have an
industry that is not as diligent as we would like."

The corn in question is spliced with bacteria genes to resist bugs without
the need for pesticides. It differs from Syngenta's approved seeds only in
terms of where the foreign genetic material is placed in the plant's genome,
said Jeff Stein, head of Syngenta's U.S. regulatory affairs.

Syngenta also did not say where in the United States the corn was grown,
other than to say it sprouted on a total of 37,000 acres in four states -
representing less than 1 percent of all U.S. corn. Still, the mislabeled
corn amounted to several hundred tons shipped over the last four years.

In 2000, the inadvertent planting and distributing of genetically engineered
corn not approved for human consumption - so-called StarLink - cost the food
industry an estimated $1 billion in recalled products.

No recalls for this wrongly shipped corn are planned, Hull said, because the
government has declared the corn poses no health or environmental risks. But
all unapproved plants and seeds Syngenta still had have been destroyed, she
said. She declined to say how much the incident might cost the company.

Hull said the Swiss-based company discovered the mistake in mid-December and
reported it immediately as required by law to federal authorities. Syngenta
and the USDA said they didn't publicize the situation because of the ongoing
investigation. The science journal Nature first reported the mishap on its
Web site Tuesday.