12 February 2011

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Agriculture Department, ending years of regulatory limbo, Friday cleared the commercial planting of a genetically-modified corn made by Syngenta AG that is opposed by U.S. grain millers.

Syngenta, which has its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, genetically modified its corn line to make an enzyme called alpha-amylase. The new corn, which Syngenta calls Enogen, is designed to be used by producers of ethanol-fuel, which turn corn into alcohol through fermentation much like distillers make booze.

Ethanol makers use the enzyme to convert the starch in corn kernels into the sugar that their alcohol-excreting microorganisms like to eat. Syngenta, which spent a few hundred million dollars to develop the corn, expects ethanol companies to pay farmers a premium for growing the amylase-producing crop because it saves them the expense of buying a liquid form of the enzyme.

Syngenta's corn has been mired in the regulatory review process at the USDA since 2005 in large part because millers fought the seed's commercialization over fears that the corn will accidently slip into their factories, where the enzyme could play havoc with the functionality of some products.

Food companies use starch to make many products, ranging from breakfast cereal to corn chips. "Syngenta's own scientific data released last month shows if this corn is co-mingled with other corn, it will have significant adverse impacts on food product quality and performance," said a statement released by the North American Millers' Association Friday.

Biotechnology critics have followed Syngenta's corn closely because it is the first major biotech-crop cleared by the USDA for industrial purposes. While the vast majority of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, those plants are endowed with traits that make them easier for farmers to grow.

Syngenta's corn was cleared in 2007 for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of food. Amylase is an enzyme that is widely present in nature; the human digestive system makes it.

But the Union of Concerned Scientists, a public-interest group, still has concerns about the safety of Syngenta's enzyme because it comes from a unique source. The genetic material that Syngenta put in its corn plant came from exotic microorganisms able to live in extremely hot water, such as near deep sea vents.

"The USDA just threw the food processing industry under the bus for the biotechnology industry," said Margaret Mellon, director of the food environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Syngenta, which makes pesticides and seeds, said it expects U.S. farmers to plant about 25,000 acres of its biotech corn this spring, and that planting of the crop might grow to millions of acres in a decade as it is adopted by the ethanol industry, which is consuming about 40% of the U.S. corn crop.

Syngenta said it will prevent its new biotech corn from getting into food-processing supplies with contracts requiring that the farmers who grow it and the ethanol companies that use it follow strict handling rules.