WHAT'S HIDING IN TRANSGENIC FOODS?

OVER THE YEARS, AS GENETICALly engineered crops have been developed and marketed, critics have raised many objections. They fear the crops may cross with wild relatives and create superweeds, or the levels of toxins in the plants may turn out to be unexpectedly higher than those in conventional varieties, or insects may become resistant to the insecticides in the genetically modified plants. But the potential drawback that has caused regulators and marketers the most consternation is the possibility that a novel protein—the protein coded by the transferred gene—in a genetically engineered plant may turn out to be a new allergen. For example, Aventis' StarLink corn—genetically engineered to produce the insecticidal protein called Cry9C, which is derived from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis —was approved for animal or industrial, but not human, use because of the possibility that Cry9C may be an allergen. Because of this, after StarLink was discovered in some 300 corn products for people, mainly because of ...