No need for EU alarm over StarLink corn - EU aide
Date: 30-Oct-00
Country: USA
John Richardson, deputy chief of the European Commission's delegation to the United States, said he knew of no evidence the StarLink corn variety was unsafe for humans, even though it has not been approved for food use.
Traces of the variety have been found in some US food products, but "it hasn't yet led to any consequences of a food safety nature," Richardson said.
Concern about the genetically modified variety, which the US Environmental Protection Agency approved only for use as livestock feed, has prompted Japan to asked visiting US officials to block US corn shipments containing Starlink.
Japan is a major buyer of US corn, unlike Europe, which has sharply cut back its American purchases in the past few years.
In the absence of evidence that StarLink is harmful to humans, "I see no reason why there should be a scare developing" in the EU, Richardson said.
He also said, however, that the accidental contamination of American yellow corn with small amounts of StarLink showed regulators should not decide that a biotech crop was suitable for animals but not for humans.
Generally, US corn exporters have steered clear of the EU market in recent years because some biotech corn varieties, including StarLink, planted in the United States have not yet been approved by Brussels.
The fear that a cargo could be rejected has reduced US corn sales to the EU to just a trickle, compared to millions of tonnes annually through much of the 1990s.
In the 1999/2000 marketing year, which ended August 31, the United States sold just 33,100 tonnes of corn to the EU, down from 137,100 tonnes the previous year.
So far, there is no evidence any StarLink corn has been exported to the EU, Richardson said.