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EPA re-evaluates StarLink license

Nature Biotechnology volume 19, page 11 (2001)Cite this article

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US regulatory officials continued to wrestle in December with a request from Aventis CropScience (Research Triangle Park, NC) to permit limited human consumption of its StarLink corn. Although the company has been removing products that contain StarLink from the food supply, Aventis representatives are requesting that, with so little of it now remaining in the pipeline, it be approved for consumption because public health is not in jeopardy. Scientists on a panel advising the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, DC) on the company's request came close to agreeing with those arguments, concluding that despite a “medium likelihood” that StarLink-containing foods include an allergen, there is a “low probability” of it affecting consumers.

The StarLink episode began last October when activist coalition Genetic Engineering Food Alert (GEFA; Washington, DC) reported finding traces of this GM corn in food products (Nat. Biotechnol. 18, 1136, 2000). The difficulty for Aventis is that StarLink contains a Cry9C gene, encoding a variant of the insecticidal protein derived from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that EPA did not approve for human food use. Indeed, when StarLink was registered, agency officials specified that it and other types of corn grown within 660 feet be used “only in animal feed, industrial non-food uses such as ethanol production, and [for] seed increase.” Further, agency officials said that “Aventis CropScience. . .is liable for the actions of its customers in regard to meeting the terms and limitations of this registration.”

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Authors
  1. Jeffrey L. Fox
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Fox, J. EPA re-evaluates StarLink license. Nat Biotechnol 19, 11 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/83435

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