Reuters
WASHINGTON
- Aventis SA estimated on Sunday that more than 430 million bushels
of the U.S. corn supply was tainted with small amounts of its
StarLink bio-corn.
The company
provided the following detailed information to a meeting of U.S.
grain millers about the StarLink contamination that was first
discovered last September:
* Some 99
percent of the roughly 80 million bushels of StarLink corn grown
in 2000 by more than 5,100 American farmers has been identified
and routed to animal feed or ethanol production.
* Another
20 million bushels of commingled corn has been "identified
and contained" with the help of 820 grain elevators. The
corn came from farms adjacent to StarLink growers, where pollen
may have been blown onto the fields by the wind, or from corn
seed contaminated with StarLink's unique Cry9C protein.
* Some 94
million bushels of commingled corn found by grain elevators has
already been routed to animal feed or ethanol production
* Another
343 million bushels of commingled corn in storage is believed
to have come from the 1999 crop and "will be rerouted in
the months to come" Aventis said.
* An estimated
1.7 million tests to detect StarLink's Cry9C protein have been
conducted since last autumn by foodmakers, grain handlers, and
the U.S. Agriculture Department.
* More than
28,000 trucks, 15,000 railcars and 285 barges have been found
to contain contaminated corn during testing for StarLink residue.
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