Word: starlink
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...September, GM corn was discovered in tacos sold in the United States. The strain of corn, known as StarLink, has been altered so that it can "naturally" produce a toxin for corn borers, one of the more significant pests that plague corn crops. The pesticide produced by the artificially enhanced corn, however, is not quite as harmless to human health as initially predicted: the transplanted gene also codes for a human allergen. Recognizing the uncertainty, if not the danger, involved with this GM organism, the U.S. government revoked the right of Aventis--the company that produces StarLink--to plant...
Despite these restrictions, last month corn exported from the United States to Japan and meant for human and livestock consumption was also found to include some of the StarLink strain. Even without the danger of an adverse reaction in humans, the unexpected occurrence of modified genomes is an enormous ecological problem. Yet this time, because of the suspected threat to human health, the matter was significantly more than "theoretically" wrong. Despite a ban on the use of a GM organism in the United States, a possible health threat found its way into the food supply of another country from American...
...tainted seed get into the tacos? They are sold by Kraft but made by a Mexican company whose corn comes from any number of U.S. farms. Farmers who grow StarLink do so on the condition that they'll keep it out of human food supplies--a promise that's easy to elicit but hard to enforce...
...telling when they'll turn up on our plates. Sure enough, early last week Genetically Engineered Food Alert, a consumer and environmental group, reported that traces of DNA from GM corn not approved for human consumption had been discovered in Taco Bell's tacos. The corn, known as StarLink, contains a gene from a bacterium that makes the corn deadly to corn borers but not to cows. It was approved for use as cattle feed but not for human consumption, for fear it could trigger allergic reactions...