Something Funny Down on the Pharm

It's this sort of reflexive secrecy that seems to particularly inflame pharming opponents -- a secrecy not just among those producing pharmed crops, but among their watchdogs as well. After the Aurora incident, citing the need to protect ProdiGene's confidential business information, the USDA said nothing when advocacy groups clamored to know what had been planted, where, and exactly what precautions were being taken to confine drug crops. USDA spokesman Jim Rogers, with some justification, touted the ProdiGene case as "an excellent illustration of how our regulations work,"
because the agency caught the drug corn before it entered the food supply. But if experience teaches us anything, it's that the current USDA system will not catch every crop contamination: In 2000, an untested insecticide-producing corn called Starlink got mixed with normal corn, causing a massive recall of corn chips, taco shells and other corn products. No one was hurt, but the fiasco cost farmers and food companies
a billion dollars.



Still, pharming advocates show no signs of stopping. According to Laos, up to 10 percent of U.S. corn acres could one day be pharm corn, although other industry insiders call his estimates vastly optimistic. A glossy sales brochure put out by a seed company also owned by Laos promises pharmers a profitable future in the midst of hard times for regular farmers. The brochure's cover sports a classic bucolic farm scene, a shiny green tractor idling next to two hoppers overflowing with corn kernels. Above them is a motto: "The Future of Corn Is Science."

AT 6:30 A.M. the morning after my meeting with Laos, a handful of pickup trucks were already parked in the dark, cold lot at The Pantry -- a diner across from Ken's Motel on the old state road at the north edge of town. At a Formica table in the corner, seven middle-aged men leaned over their coffee talking quietly. They wore sturdy work clothes and baseball caps that said things like "Circle Seed Hybrids." A small white marker board on the counter advertised the breakfast special: "2 eggs & tst, $1.99."



After I asked the men about ProdiGene and pharmaceutical corn, they sat silent for a few awkward seconds, then started jawing away. Yeah, they're all farmers, except for Kelly here who services farm machinery. What about the ProdiGene incident? "They're just blowing it all out of proportion," said one. Then they all started talking at once: Oh, it was just a couple of tiny corn plants in the beans, way too small to make any seed or pollen, let alone damage the beans. Besides, the leaves and stalks probably got blown out the back of the combine. Even if they didn't, the screening system at the elevator would have caught it. "You know how the government gets," one said.



The waitress refilled the coffee and Kelly, the biggest man at the table, sighed. "Pharmaceutical corn would probably be a good thing if they get something developed," he said. "Might be an increase in profit or something. But they got
a long ways to go, don't they?" The other men chuckled knowingly, and a lean, fast-talking man in a black cap smiled. "Got a long ways to go before profit now," he said.



On December 6, Laos signed what is essentially an out-of-court settlement between ProdiGene and the USDA. In it, he agreed to undergo stricter agency oversight, to pay a $250,000 fine, and to buy back the 500,000 bushels of contaminated soybeans from the Aurora Co-op for about $3 million. The agency said ProdiGene violated its permits at three sites. One, I noticed, was a farm called Carlson Nursery.