Washington — The Agriculture Department will pay up to $20 million this year to compensate seed companies for corn mixed with an unapproved genetically modified variety the first direct federal bailout of food producers harmed by biotechnology.
Using funds normally lent to farmers faced with natural disasters such as drought and flood, the Agriculture Department will buy back between 300,000 and 400,000 bags of corn seed found to contain the protein engineered into StarLink corn, officials said Wednesday.
Experts said the StarLink protein was most likely bred inadvertently into the seed corn through the drift of pollen from other cornfields. The genetically engineered protein does not pose an immediate health threat, officials said, but it is not approved for human use and its presence has caused massive recalls and disruptions for corn exporters.
"The idea here is to get a program up and running as an incentive to farmers to participate before the planting season," Agriculture Department spokesman Kevin Herglotz said. "The goal is containment."
StarLink was developed by Aventis CropScience and was planted on less than 0.02 percent of corn crops. Officials said Wednesday that the modified protein, designed to combat the European corn borer, had been found in less than 1 percent of the nation's corn seed.
The Agriculture Department announcement said that $15 million to $20 million would be need for the seed-corn buyback and that details would be sent directly to seed-corn companies this week. Herglotz said that the department was not asking Aventis to reimburse it for the costs but that "reimbursement has not been ruled out for the future." Aventis declined to comment on potential reimbursements.
Some critics of biotechnology denounced the department's announcement, calling it a misuse of public money.
"There is no way the taxpayers should bail out Aventis for the genetic pollution they created," said Larry Bohlen of Friends of the Earth. "The company would benefit from the profits on their patent, and should pay to bring it back when there's a problem."
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