Since then, some of the largest US food and animal feed processors, Kellogg, ConAgra, Archer Daniels Midland, and Tyson, either temporarily closed their grain mills or announced mandatory testing for Cry9C corn. The StarLink scandal brought home the realization that the nation's supermarkets are filled with untested, unlabeled, GE foods. GEFA, which tested the taco shells and broke the news about StarLink, includes Friends of the Earth, Organic Consumers Association, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, National Environmental Trust, and the US Public Interest Research Group. Critics of GE food have warned for years that splicing foreign proteins into common food products, proteins which in most cases humans have never eaten before, can set off dangerous food allergies, with symptoms ranging from fever, rashes, and diarrhea to anaphylactic shock and sudden death. The FDA admits that eight percent of all US children suffer food allergies, and that the situation is growing worse.
Nutritionists also warn of a suspected link between food allergies and asthma.
When the US announced that grain exporters could ship StarLink-contaminated corn to international markets, things got worse. Americans are refusing to eat this stuff, Tyson Foods, the largest poultry producer in the US, won't even feed it to their chickens, but you can eat it. The appalling lack of US government regulation and the greed of so-called Life Science corporations to rush untested, and in this case, likely dangerous products to market have now become obvious. US farmers, and even a number of large food corporations, have already begun cutting back on their use of GE seeds or food ingredients. Some 33 percent of US corn acreage was GE last year.