genetically engineered corn, article 1

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just in case you eat or raise corn...eeeeewwww, another article follows.

Flo

-----From today's Seattle Times.------------------------U.S. quiet about sale of altered cornBy Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated PressWASHINGTON - The federal government kept it secret for three months thatgenetically modified corn seed was sold accidentally to some U.S. farms forfour years and may have gotten into the U.S. food supply.The accidental use of unapproved seed became public when the scientificjournal Nature published a story about it yesterday.The U.S. food supply and plant and animal stocks weren't harmed and remainsafe to eat, according to officials of the seed company and the government.But the government's secrecy about the mistake raises serious concerns,according to independent experts.Syngenta, a Swiss-based company, distributed the unapproved geneticallyaltered corn seed, Bt 10, which was engineered to resist bugs. It mixed theBt 10 with a similar and approved corn seed called Bt 11, company officialssaid yesterday. The Bt 10 was modified with a gene from the pesticidelikebacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.Hundreds of tons of the genetically engineered seeds and resulting corn cropwere shipped in the United States and overseas between 2001 and 2004.Spokesmen for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA) said there was no need to notify the public becausethe government had determined that Bt 10 was safe. The USDA is investigatingthe incident, and the seed company faces up to $500,000 in fines,Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers said."Most of the corn is used for industrial and animal use," companyspokeswoman Sarah Hull said. "It may have gotten into the food supply, butregardless, the proteins are deemed safe, and there's no food concern."Remaining seeds have been destroyed or isolated, Hull said.Syngenta's U.S. headquarters is in Greensboro, N.C. It runs its seedoperation out of Golden Valley, Minn."I personally don't see it would be a major issue," said Kendall Lamkey, thehead of Iowa State University's plant-breeding center. But the way thefederal government kept the mistake secret is alarming and may underminepublic confidence in genetically modified crops, said Lamkey, who served ona National Academy of Sciences panel in 2002 on the environmental impact ofgenetically modified crops.In mid-December, Syngenta told the EPA, the Agriculture Department and theFood and Drug Administration about the mistake, Hull said.EPA scientists reviewed seven packets of information from Syngenta from Jan.7 to March 10, and "as more data came in, the confidence of our scientificdetermination [of no risk] increased," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman saidin an e-mail. "Had there been a human health concern, we would have alertedthe public immediately."Syngenta did not say where in the United States the corn was grown, otherthan to say it sprouted on a total of 37,000 acres in four states,representing less than 1 percent of all U.S. corn.