But things have turned out differently. Allergenic corn discovered The biotech corporations suffered a serious setback September last year, when theGenetically Engineered Food Alert coalition revealed that an illegal, likely allergenic variety of genetically engineered corn Cry9C, called StarLink, had been found in Kraft taco shells. The biotech industry at first tried to deny the validity of the lab tests done by the Food Alert coalition, but within days public pressure forced Kraft, the largest food corporation in America, to recall 2.5 million boxes of the corn tacos. Critics of gene foods for years have warned 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 diarrhoea to anaphylactic shock and sudden death. Around eight percent of all US children suffer from food allergies, and that situation is growing worse.
Nutritionists warn of a suspected link between food allergies and asthma.
In the wake of the StarLink crisis, some of the largest US food and animal feed processors, such as Kelloggs, either temporarily closed their grain mills or announced mandatory testing for Cry9C corn. Meanwhile, the White House sent emergency teams to Japan and Europe, trying to reassure major US trading partners that the StarLink controversy would be kept under control. Consumers claiming to have been poisoned by StarLink corn products are filing lawsuits. 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, even in the heartland of biotech, the United States. For the first time in five years the amount of global acreage devoted to biotech crops has levelled off and appears headed in 2001 for significant decreases.