AP Online 

October 26, 2001 Friday 2:12 AM Eastern Time 

Farmers Warned About Corn Test Kits 

BY EMILY GERSEMA; Associated Press Writer 

DES MOINES, Iowa 

A corn researcher and officials from a chemical company are warning farmers
and grain elevators during this harvest season that testing kits for a type
of genetically modified corn don't rapidly detect it. 

The corn allows farmers who use Roundup Ultra herbicide to apply the weed
killer directly on the crop without killing it. 

Unlike the genetically modified StarLink corn, which led to recalls when it
was found in the U.S. food supply last year, Roundup Ready has been
approved for human consumption. The modified corn can be sold in U.S.
markets, however it hasn't been accepted by the European Union. Because of
European and Japanese restrictions, farmers, grain elevator operators and
millers must try to keep biotech varieties separated from unaltered types
in order to follow international and domestic standards. 

"This is important because it means there's still no other means to isolate
Roundup Ready corn other than farmers' voluntary efforts to separate the
corn" from varieties that aren't genetically modified," said Charles
Hurburgh Jr., an Iowa State professor and researcher at the Iowa Grain
Quality Initiative. 

Strategic Diagnostics Inc. offers a kit to identify Roundup Ready corn, but
Hurburgh said the testing kits don't identify all types. 

The two different types of Roundup Ready corn grown in the United States
are produced through modifications called the GA21 event and the NK603
event. Testing kits can identify the NK603 event, Hurburgh said, but they
don't identify Roundup Ready corn containing the GA21 event. 

"We would hope that people would not confuse that," said Bryan Hurley, a
spokesman for St. Louis-based Monsanto, which makes Roundup. 

Hurburgh said there is a more exhaustive test available for Roundup Ready
corn, called a polymerase chain reaction, but "such testing is more likely
to be done by the receiver of the grain or grain products, at which point
management of problems is both costly and difficult." 

Hurburgh and other agricultural researchers gave tips to Iowa farmers just
before spring planting to help them avoid commingling genetically altered
corn with other varieties and prevent another StarLink scare. Last year's
discovery of StarLink in some taco shells and other foods pushed the
Agriculture Department to test the corn supply extensively. Aventis
CropScience has since withdrawn StarLink from the market.