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The third largest maize (corn) processor in the United States has refused to accept genetically modified (GM) maize that has not been approved for import by the European Union (EU).

In a letter earlier this month to grain elevators, A. E. Staley Manufacturing Co. of Decatur, Illinois, said that its plants would not accept GM maize hybrids that have not been approved by the EU. Such hybrids account for about 17 per cent of all GM maize being grown in the United States this year: about 7 per cent of the total US maize crop of some 80 million acres.

Farmers' and processors' trade associations say that the percentage of the crop affected is small and that Staley's move simply reflects a policy adopted by the industry a year ago.

Opponents of GM food see the Staley letter as evidence that public wariness of GM foods in Europe is beginning to force concessions, even as EU and US officials enter what are expected to be rancorous negotiations over labelling (see Nature 398, 641; 1999).

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) says that customers have asked for EU-unapproved varieties not to be used at facilities where maize is processed for export. Consequently, it says, its members have asked grain merchants to help farmers avoid delivering EU-unapproved maize to refiners or export elevators.

Officials from Cargill Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the two largest US maize processors, said that they were already implementing the CRA policy. Martin Andreas, a senior vice president at ADM, says the company is asking farmers to channel unapproved crops directly to the domestic feed business. “With the cooperation of the seed companies and the farmers and the processors working together this problem can be handled,” he says.

Phil Bereano, a professor of technology and public policy at the University of Washington in Seattle, argues that the processors are responding to “plain old simple capitalist supply and demand economics. What has been created is a very substantial market [for non-GM foods] with a sharp border around it. Unfortunately, only European consumers will benefit.”

A spokesman for the National Corn Growers Association says that the move should not be construed as a victory for anti-GM food activists. “If anything [the processors' position] is a victory for farmers,” says Kevin Aandahl. “[It shows] we're responsive to customer needs while we're working through the cultural and trade issues. If anything it's an admission that we're all in this together.”

The three affected varieties of GM maize are Monsanto's Roundup Ready, engineered for herbicide resistance; and two Bt varieties, engineered to produce a toxin made by a soil bacterium: Monsanto's Bt Xtra (formerly made by DeKalb); and AgrEvo's StarLink. The three, occurring alone or in combination in seven seed products, are expected to be planted on about 5.2 million acres in 1999.

Please see Table 1.

Table 1 How GM varieties are sweeping US cornfields