Take care of what you eat these days especially when it is
industrialized foodstuff:-)

The following is from the APC Networks.

Momodou Camara

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Title: BIOTECHNOLOGY: Traces of Unapproved Biotech Corn
Found in Taco Shells

By Danielle Knight

WASHINGTON, Sep 18 (IPS) - Fuelling the debate on genetically
modified foods, a sample of taco shells here was found to contain
a form of engineered corn not approved for human consumption
because it may cause harmful allergies.

The type of corn, known as Starlink or Cry9C, is currently only
approved in the US for animal consumption. But when environmental
and food safety organisations sent away samples of commonly
found foods, the test results concluded that one percent of Taco
Bell brand taco shells tested illegally contained this strain of corn.

''This is a legal violation and the US Food and Drug
Administration clearly has the authority to seize the product if
Taco Bell and Philip Morris do not recall it,'' says Joseph
Mendelson, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, an
advocacy group based here.

The corn has been modified in such a way that makes it difficult
to digest by humans. Possible health effects could include nausea
and anaphylactic shock, but most impacts are not currently known
because only a few tests have been conducted, according to Jane
Rissler, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Taco Bell brand taco shells are distributed by Kraft Foods Inc., a
subsidiary of Philip Morris. Government regulators and Kraft say
that if the tests are proven true, they will take the ''necessary
steps'' to remove the product from store shelves across the
country.

''If it is confirmed we will take all appropriate steps in
consultation with the Food and Drug Administration,'' says Michael
Mudd, a spokesman for Kraft.

While officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have
already started an investigation, environmental and public health
organisations who conducted the original test on the tacos say
this proves that the government is not adequately testing for food
safety.

''Unfortunately, we had to step into the regulatory vacuum,'' says
Mendelson.''We were the ones that had to go out and test the food
and notify the companies and the government.''

Mendelson's organisation and others here have criticised the FDA
for calling genetically engineered foods ''substantially
equivalent'' to their unmodified counterparts. While half of all
soybeans and a third of all corn in the United States is
genetically altered, the regulatory agency does not test modified
foods for harmful health impacts.

A coalition of gentech watchdog groups, known as the Genetically
Engineered Food Alert, began independently sending away food for
testing after studies conducted by researchers at Cornell
University revealed that pollen from modified corn was poisonous
to the larvae of monarch butterflies.

They sent samples of corn chips, frozen TV dinners, cereal and
other food to Genetic Id, a company based in Iowa.

While biotech industry officials have said that it is easy to get
a false positive result when testing for Cry9C, Genetic Id says it
repeated the tests four times. Each time, researchers found one
percent of the corn DNA to be from the unapproved corn.

The Starlink corn, manufactured by Aventis, is genetically altered
to contain the plant pesticide Bacillus thuringienis, or Bt, which
kills the dreaded European corn borer. Aventis has applied for an
exemption to the government's restriction of Starlink.

But so far the Environmental Protection Agency has only deemed
the corn fit for animal consumption since the company's data
indicate ''that Cry9C exhibits some characteristics of known
allergens.''

Genetically Engineered Food Alert is calling on the FDA to quickly
begin testing for the presence of Cry9C corn in all products
containing yellow corn number 2, the grade of corn to which
Starlink belongs.

According to the American Corn Growers Association, only nine
percent of the conventional corn crop was segregated from
genetically engineered corn in 1999. Products made with yellow
corn number 2 may include many varieties of tortillas, corn chips,
breakfast cereals and corn meal.

''Consumers need to know whether this is just the tip of the
iceberg,'' says Larry Bohlen, director of health and environment
programmes at Friends of the Earth, which is part of the
coalition.

Samples of taco shells from Taco Bell restaurants will also be
tested soon, he says.

Concern about allergies caused by genetically modified foods have
increased since 1995, when researchers found that a brazil nut
gene spliced into a soybean caused allergies. People who were
allergic to brazil nuts and ate the soybeans had an allergic
reaction. That type of modified soybean though has never been
marketed.

Uncertainty about whether genetically engineered food could cause
harmful allergies is one reason consumer and environmental groups
are demanding that modified food be labelled in the United States
as it is in some European countries.

''Consumers are demanding a choice to either avoid or eat
genetically engineered food and that choice is impossible without
mandatory labelling,'' says Rissler with the Union of Concerned
Scientists.

Proposed legislation is now circulating through Congress that
would require mandatory labelling, not just voluntary labelling.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a democrat from Illinois, is leading
the call for more testing and labelling.

Upon hearing about the contaminated taco shells, Kucinich told
reporters that he was worried that this was a ''glimpse of things
to come.''

''This discovery just shows that genetically engineered
ingredients should not be on the grocery story shelves when so
poorly regulated by the FDA,'' he said. (END/IPS/SC/DV/dk/da/00)

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URL: http://home3.inet.tele.dk/mcamara
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