Something Funny Down on the Pharm

That's how I found my way from The Pantry out to Curt
Carlson's farm, where I sat watching cattle nose around a water trough at the edge of a cornfield until Carlson drove up in his white pickup. He invited me into his house and told me that he and his son Cale, 25, have grown three small test plots and a 12-acre commercial production plot for ProdiGene in the past three years. The company tells them only that the corn is genetically engineered to make a protein.



Later, as we looked at Carlson's ProdiGene plot from his truck's cab, he described how eight ProdiGene workers picked the corn by hand, sealed it in containers, then drove off with it in a locked semi. He wanted to make one thing clear, he said: Those contaminated soybeans didn't come from his field. "I know who it was," he said. Then he hesitated. "But I don't want to get anyone in trouble."

Dan Ferber is a freelance science writer living in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in the heart of pharm country. He is a correspondent for Science magazine.