The department is still trying to locate about 1.2 million bushels of the 80 million bushels of Starlink planted for the 2000 season.Earlier this month, Aventis SA had announced suspending seed sales of the genetically modified corn that tainted Kraft Foods' taco shells. It was the first time a major crop-biotechnology firm had frozen sales of a GMO seed.The French pharmaceutical and agricultural company, inventor of the corn, had then said it won't resume US sales of the seed until Washington approves the crop for use in human food, which regulators say won't happen anytime soon. Aventis, began licensing US companies to market the genetically modified Seed, called StarLink, in 1998 after the EPA cleared the corn for use in livestock feed and for making ethanol fuel.

Aventis "didn't live up to its side of the bargain," said Jim Aidala, an official from the EPA, which approved Starlink only for animal feeds or industrial use because the agency couldn't rule out the possibility that humans would be allergic to it. The agency's approval was conditioned on Aventis's agreement to keep Starlink from being eaten by humans.The corn, engineered to make its own insecticide, isn't approved for human consumption. Regulators aren't convinced the bug-killing protein, called Cry9C, isn't a potential food allergen. It was however, unclear whether Aventis can prevent the corn from entering the food chain. StarLink is grown on 315,000 acres on farms scattered from Texas to Illinois. Aventis said its suspension is designed to reassure the public that StarLink corn won't get into the food supply in the future. "It isn't in our interest to sell corn seed if it is causing confusion," said Aventis spokesman Rick Rountree.

Stephen L. Johnson, EPA deputy assistant administrator for pesticides, called Aventis' decision "a prudent action that we fully support."Voluntary actions Aventis declined to comment on the charge that it hadn't fulfilled elements of its agreement with the EPA. The company's crop-science unit has "taken unprecedented, voluntary actions to successfully contain Starlink corn," said a representative of the company.

The company had agreed to label seed packets of Starlink so farmers would know it wasn't for human food, EPA officials said. Farmers also were supposed to sign agreements, saying they understood the restrictions on planting, which include a 660-foot buffer zone to prevent cross-pollination. The officials, who leveled their charges during a meeting on Thursday of the Senate's bipartisan biotechnology caucus, didn't specify how Aventis fell short of its commitments, but the EPA said the matter is under investigation.Bill Christison, a Chillicothe, Mo., farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition, a Washington advocacy group, said some growers weren't asked to sign agreements and weren't told about the precautions they needed to take when planting Starlink. Aventis declined to comment on the allegations.

Aventis no longer sells Starlink and is buying it back from farmers who planted it. But the company submitted data to the EPA on Wednesday in an attempt to gain temporary approval to use the bioengineered corn in human food. The EPA plans to present the data at a public hearing before ruling on the request. The antibiotech coalition Genetically Engineered Food Alert found Starlink in Taco Bell and Safeway taco shells, touching off a wave of recalls and production stoppages. Mission Foods of Irving, Texas, which makes Safeway taco shells, among other brands, recalled all of its yellow-corn products. Kellogg Co. and ConAgra Foods Inc. have temporarily closed their facilities to ensure their supplies aren't contaminated.

Export ban lifted Such experiences make it "unlikely" the EPA will ever approve another genetically modified crop not meant for human consumption, said EPA official Steve Johnson. The Agriculture Department Wednesday dispatched a team to Japan to investigate a consumer group's claim to have found Starlink in a food product. Government regulators Thursday lifted the prohibition on exporting Starlink corn, which initially was intended only for domestic use. Exporters can ship the genetically modified breed if it isn't destined for human food, said a USDA official.

The FDA has received reports from people who said they had allergic reactions after eating foods that could have contained Starlink. But the agency hasn't confirmed that the genetically modified corn was the cause.During the Senate meeting, EPA and Agriculture Department officials continued to emphasize that they haven't confirmed any reports of allergic reactions in humans due to Starlink. The officials also briefed the White House budget office on the biotech-corn issue Thursday.

Antibiotechnology groups have criticized the government for not being tough enough on biotech food. "Both government and industry are culpable here," said Richard Caplan, an environmental advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Federal regulators aren't yet sure how the taco-shell debacle happened in the first place. Some food industry officials suspect airborne pollen from a StarLink field might have blown into fields of conventional corn being grown under contract for the Azteca Milling facility in Plainview, Texas, which makes corn flour for Kraft's taco shell.

(The authors are staff writers of The Asian Wall Street Journal)