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By Sarah Lueck and Scott Kilman
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
November 2, 2000
The flap over StarLink corn, a biotechnology product
not approved for human consumption, has led to the recall of nearly 300
food products and caused major disruptions in parts of the Farm Belt.
The recall involves companies ranging from restaurants
such as Wendy's and Applebee's to small food companies. The products are
included on a list released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration,
and its length suggests the costs of the recall are growing.
The products are made by Mission Foods of Irving,
Texas, which initiated the recall last month after tests by an antibiotechnology
group found StarLink corn in some of Mission's products. The corn, made
by French pharmaceuticals company Aventis SA, contains
a protein that acts as a pesticide and is supposed to be used only in
animal feed or for industrial purposes because it may cause allergies
in humans.
The list, which includes more than 70 types of taco
chips, more than 80 taco shells and nearly 100 foods served in restaurants,
is the first opportunity for consumers to see a comprehensive roster of
products affected by the recall. It is available on the FDA's Web site
at www.fda.gov. (CLICK
HERE for the complete list) Mission, which said it isn't sure how
much the recall will cost, is telling consumers to take the products back
to where they bought them for a refund or a replacement.
FDA officials have said they don't expect health
problems if people eat the corn. The agency has received a few reports
from people who believe they had allergic reactions after eating products
that may have contained StarLink, but it hasn't confirmed any of them.
Many of the products on the list are already off
the market, Mission spokesman Peter Pitts said. Officials of Wendy's International
Inc., Dublin, Ohio, and Applebee's International Inc., Overland Park,
Kan., said they immediately removed the taco chips in question from restaurants
when the recall was announced.
To prevent further recalls, Aventis is scrambling
to buy up this year's crop before it enters the food chain. But it might
be years before every kernel of StarLink corn grown during the past three
seasons is cleared from the system.
Indeed, some grain-industry officials said it
is possible that roughly half the crop stored in grain elevators in Iowa,
the nation's biggest corn-producing state, might accidentally contain
tiny traces of StarLink corn. Iowa farmers planted 135,000
acres of StarLink corn this year, more than what was planted in any other
state and 40% of what was planted across the nation.
Iowa's StarLink harvest of about 25 million bushels
this year is a tiny fraction of the state's total corn harvest of two
billion bushels. But the StarLink variety was grown so widely in the state
-- and tests to detect it are so accurate -- that scores of Iowa farmer-owned
cooperatives are worried they won't be able to fulfill contracts to deliver
grain to the state's biggest millers, which use only food-grade quality
corn.
Gary Alberts of the Iowa Institute for Cooperatives,
a trade group, said Wednesday that so far, about a dozen grain co-ops
have reported finding StarLink in their inventories. The co-ops are trying
to reroute the corn to livestock-feed producers, which are cleared to
use StarLink but are beginning to demand a discount on the corn.
Gary Strube, manager of Superior Cooperative Elevator
Co. in Estherville, Iowa, said StarLink was detected Wednesday in 25 cars
of an 81-car grain train he was preparing to send to an Archer-Daniels-Midland
Co. mill. As a result, Mr. Strube is shipping the corn to a livestock
operation at an additional cost to the elevator of about $11,000 -- a
lot of money in this low-margin business.
It was the second time in two weeks that has happened,
bringing the elevator's StarLink-related costs to about $35,000. Mr. Strube
said he is sending a bill to Aventis, which has told him it will pay.
"If they pick up the tab, we won't sue," he said.
ADM said it also plans to send a bill for its StarLink-related
expenses to Aventis. To screen the hundreds of trucks and railcars pouring
into its mills daily, the Decatur, Ill., grain-processing giant has hired
dozens of people and used thousands of test kits. "Aventis is going
to have to compensate us," an ADM spokesman said.
Write to Sarah Lueck at sarah.lueck@wsj.com
and Scott Kilman at scott.kilman@wsj.com
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