Originally aired May 18, 2001

Some opponents of bioengineered crops call them “Frankencrops.” Crop varieties that have been genetically altered for many purposes, including weed and insect control. They’ve become common, and popular.

But what happens when it’s creator loses control of one of these so-called “Frankencrops?” “Statewide’s” Mike Tobias reports that in the case of StarLink, it becomes a monster costing farmers millions of dollars.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: • University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension CropWatch StarLink site http://cropwatch.unl.edu/starlink.htm • Iowa Grain Quality Initiative StarLink News and Publications http://www.exnet.iastate.edu/Pages/grain/gmo/gmo.html • Aventis CropScience StarLink site http://www.starlinkcorn.com/ • Nebraska Corn Board http://linux1.nrc.state.ne.us/cornstalk/ • Nebraska Corn Growers http://www.necga.org/

StarLink was created by Aventis CropScience. When it first came out three years ago, it seemed like a good idea. Add a protein to corn to kill corn borers naturally, decreasing the amount of pesticides farmers use and time they spend in the field. But Tobias reports that communication and a questionable regulatory decision led to where we are today – in the middle of a situation some call a disaster.

UNL agronomy professor Don Lee shows how a genetically engineered crop is developed:
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Pat Ptacek, executive vice president of the Nebraska Feed and Grain Association, talks about the lessons learned from StarLink:
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UNL agronomy professor Don Lee talks about the possibility of health risks from StarLink:
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Wisner farmer Gary Godbersen comments on possible StarLink problems this year:
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Nebraska Corn Growers president Mark Schweers discusses who is to blame for the StarLink problem:
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Don Hutchens, executive director of the Nebraska Corn Board, talks about StarLink's impact on development of biotech crops:
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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript of Perspective

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Mike Tobias.


It's the talk around seed company booths at this Omaha Farm Show and other places where farmers gather.
[Ron Krapfl] "I would say, what? Three out of five farmers bring it up."
[Don Konz] "There has been a lot of questions. Very few answers at this point."
It's StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn. Farmers talk about it like it's a communicable disease. In fact, many of those that have it don't want others to know.
[Gordon Ganz] "It's just kind of a disaster. And the worse thing is we're not going to just get rid of it in one year."
A year ago StarLink was anything but a disaster waiting to happen. Aventis hailed it as a major advancement in corn borer control. Farmers saw a way to control insects, cut costs and protect the environment all at the same time.
[Don Lee] "We all want to be able to grow our products with the use of fewer pesticides that could cause damage to non-target insect pests, or even to animals or people."
Don Lee does research on genetically engineered crops. He uses a simple chart to show students how StarLink and other biotech crops are created. It stpers with a soil bacteria.
[Lee] "That this bacteria naturally makes proteins that kill European corn borers, and lets borrow the gene from nature then and just put it into a crop plant. And give the crop plant the ability to make this protein."
There are similar biotech corn varieties. But StarLink used a slightly different protein for the first time.
[Lee] "The advantage of using that protein is that its another way of killing the European Corn Borer. And anyone that's dealt with insects becoming resistant to one form of control recognized that that could be very valuable. But the… it also has different properties in terms of how our stomachs seem to be able to digest it."
This concern about digestibility and and possible allergic reactions caused one federal agency, the EPA, to give StarLink only partial approval. They said it was okay for use as animal feed, but not for human consumption. Two other federal agencies, the USDA and Food and Drug Administration, gave StarLink full approval.
[Merlyn Carlson] "I think there was a lot of fear. I remember the Corn Board, Corn Growers expressing concern that the StarLink product had not been cleared for food. Had expressed that early on."
Partial approval wasn't an issue for Wisner farmer Gary Godbersen. There are a lot of feedlots near his farm so he planned on selling the StarLink for feed.
He planted five hundred acres of StarLink last year. Aventis asked Godbersen and other growers to sign contracts saying StarLink wouldn't be sold for food use. They also required other safeguards, including buffer zones around StarLink areas. Some say Aventis and the dozen seed companies the sold StarLink varieties did a poor job of communicating these measures. And making sure they were followed.
[Lee] "People didn't recognize that it had to be handled differently, all the way through the system."
[Terry Caddy] "The expectation of the seed company was probably unrealistic."
Godbersen and others in agriculture say they knew keeping StarLink separate from other corn would be tough. But they didn't think that would matter, once harvest rolled around.
[Gary Godbersen] "I think all the… the impression that all the farmers were under last spring is that it was going to get totally approved before it was all harvested."
[Mark Schweers] "I think the company anticipated that it would be approved, later on. And when they sent it out into the country they didn't think it was that big a deal."
Full approval never came. And it became a big deal last September when StarLink was discovered in the food chain. It started with traces of StarLink in taco shells. These and nearly three hundred other products were eventually pulled from shelves.
These products were likely made with corn from the 1999 harvest. And because StarLink performed well in '99, Nebraska farmers planted and harvested even more StarLink last year… 41 thousand acres. More than any state except Iowa.
The drought led to an early harvest. Any chance of keeping the StarLink contained to the fields was gone by the time the crisis surfaced.
[Caddy] "Harvest was 75 to 90 percent over at that point, so the problems were already at hand."
Less than one percent of Nebraska's total corn crop was StarLink. But the problem quickly multiplied after harvest.
[Ganz] "They'd be fourteen under, which would be 24 under the July…"
About 175 thousand bushels of StarLink came into Ashland Feed and Grain last fall. It was accidentally mixed, or co-mingled, with another 400 thousand bushels of non-StarLink.
[Ganz] "Most all of the corn is co-mingled up here so we're having to sell it nothing but to non-food grade uses. Yet I've got to pay a competitive price with the co-ops and everybody else in the area. And so it's cut into our margin considerably, not even counting the extra time that we're taking."
Ganz says even more corn was contaminated when pollen spread from StarLink fields across the required buffer zone.
[Ganz] "We are finding some corn that's testing positive for StarLink that the people absolutely didn't plant any StarLink. So we know it didn't come from their planting, we know it didn't come from their combine, but it came from cross-pollination."
[Lee] "Because it can flow in the pollen and corn makes a lot of pollen that spreads, it's… the gene will spread just like all the other genes that corn has spread."
Widespread StarLink contamination led to testing all corn that's intended for human consumption. Lincoln Inspection Service tests samples from rail and truckloads before they're exported or sent to a food mill. The test is simple. Corn is ground up, liquids added and a small strip inserted.
[Lincoln Inspection Service Employee] "This one here is positive because it has two lines. These two are negative."
It's the same test grain elevators are using and it's a tough standard. One StarLink kernel in a sample of eight hundred means the corn is contaminated.
[Kevin Bredthauer] "It is, more or less, zero tolerance."
Corn headed to Japan must pass an even tougher test. No StarLink in a 24 hundred kernel sample. The reason is simple. Japan buys more U.S. corn than any other foreign country. And Japan cut purchases of U.S. corn in half soon after the StarLink crisis hit.
[Schweers] "Our exports into there have dropped back, and they're so cautious about what they are getting. So, it's definitely hurt us."
[Pat Ptacek] "If we can't deliver to that 600 million bushel customer like Japan, somebody else is going to be more than willing to do that."
And it's not just Japan. Overall corn exports dropped 39 percent after StarLink. State Ag Director Merlyn Carlson says that's a multi-million-dollar problem for a state like Nebraska that exports about a third of its corn crop
[Carlson] "We're going to have our carry-over stocks build on us by some amount because of the lack of demand that we lost around the world from the fear of the StarLink issue."
That loss in exports dropped corn prices.
[Ganz] "I think it's probably taken 15 to 20 cents off the actual price of the corn just from the lost exports and for increasing our stocks."
That adds up quickly for corn farmers.
[Schweers] "So it could be somewhere in the 250 million range."
Aventis agreed to compensate farmers who planted StarLink, 25 cents per bushel. But that's not helping everyone. Aventis told Gary Godbersen he doesn't fall under the guidelines for a refund and that'll cost him about eleven thousand dollars.
The refund also won't help non-StarLink farmers who've lost money because of falling prices. That's why the Nebraska Corn Board recently sent a letter to Aventis. They asked the company to donate one million dollars each to the National Corn Growers and U.S. Grains Council to help rebuild lost export markets.
Aventis said no. But Don Hutchens says the Corn Board will keep trying.
[Don Hutchens] "We have a responsibility to the Nebraska corn industry and farmers, who have spent millions of dollars over the years to develop those markets in Japan and Korea and Taiwan and Mexico. And also with the consumers, to have that tainted here recently means we have to go back to the source and ask for some assistance."
Here's how the industry is rebuilding confidence in U.S. corn. The U.S. Grain council brought this group of Japanese businessmen to Lincoln. The companies they represent make starch and sweeteners. The U.S. provides almost all the corn they import, more than three million metric tons a year. But now they're looking at buying more from other countries.
[Chris Schaffer] "So you're talking roughly 8-9 percent of our total exports goes to the people in the other room. That would be a huge loss. You're talking 500 million dollars worth of export sales."
The message for this group and other export customers? U.S. products are safe.
[Tom Clemente] "What I can say is that the products that are on the market today, derived through biotechnology, are as safe or safer than all the commodities you've been eating your entire lives. Because those other commodities have never have been put through such rigorous safety assessment."
Don Lee says StarLink will also slow the development of other biotech crops.
[Lee] It's going to make the regulatory agencies review their approval procedures and they probably will have some different expectations about the kind of information that they need to have in front of them before they will go ahead on the approval of these new products.
[Hutchens] "It has set us back somewhat in the development of biotech and the use of biotech and genetically modified crops. And it's impacted consumer attitudes."
Aventis took StarLink off the market last October. But experts say it will be awhile before it's completely out of the corn supply. And while they'll be happy when StarLink corn is long gone, some in agriculture say there's value in keeping the lessons learned from StarLink around for awhile.
[Lee] "From what I've seen is people are recognizing that we need to take a more patient approach in terms of looking at all the issues that might be a part of the acceptance and impact of the technology."
[Carlson] "We need to be consumer driven, and we need to know before we grow and know before we go to those markets and understand those markets and what they're asking for."
[Ptacek] "And why I don't see Aventis as necessarily being a catastrophe in the long run. I think it's just opened everyone's eyes, to not only the challenges but also the opportunities."