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<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Fortune Magazine 02 July 2007 Issue <br /> ATTACK OF THE MUTANT RICE <br /> By Marc Gunther <br /> <br /> <br /> America's rice farmers didn't want to grow a genetically engineered crop Their customers <br /> in Europe did not want to buy it. So how did it end up in our food? <br /> Back in the spring of 2001, a 64-year-old Texas rice farmer named Jacko Garrett watched a <br /> fleet of 18-wheelers haul away truckloads of rice that he had grown with great care. "It just <br /> bothers me so bad," Garrett said. "I'm sitting here trying to find food to feed people, and I've <br /> got to bury five million pounds of rice." No one likes to waste food, but for Garrett, who runs <br /> a charity that collects rice for the needy, the pain was especially acute. <br /> Garrett's rice was genetically modified, part of an experiment that was brought to an abrupt <br /> halt by its sponsor, a North Carolina-based biotechnology company called Aventis Crop <br /> Science. The company had contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice, which was <br /> known as Liberty Link because its genes had been altered to resist a weed killer called <br /> Liberty, also made by Aventis. <br /> <br /> But by 2001, Aventis Crop Science was living a biotech nightmare. Another one of its <br /> creations, a variety of genetically modified corn known as StarLink, had been discovered in <br /> taco shells made by Kraft. Because the StarLink corn had been approved as animal feed - and <br /> not for human consumption - all hell broke loose. <br /> Hundreds of corn products were recalled. Consumers and farmers sued. Greenpeace dumped <br /> bags of corn in front of federal regulatory agencies, and an Environmental Protection Agency <br /> official accused Aventis Crop Science of breaking the law. So shell-shocked was Aventis SA, <br /> the French pharmaceutical giant that owned Aventis Crop Science, that it decided to sell the <br /> U.S. biotech unit and abandon the very emotional business of reengineering the foods we eat. <br /> <br /> So dumping the Texas rice was a no-brainer. "We didn't want to take any chances," says a <br /> former Aventis executive. "We burned and buried enough rice to feed 20 million people." <br /> Eventually Aventis paid about $120 million to settle the StarLink lawsuits. It sold its crop <br /> science unit to Bayer, the German drug giant that makes aspirin, Aleve and Alka-Seltzer. <br /> Bayer Crop Science dropped plans to bring Liberty Link rice to market, largely because rice <br /> grown in the U.S. is exported to Europe and other places that don't want genetically modified <br /> foods. And everyone forgot about Jacko Garrett's rice. <br /> <br /> Can you guess where this is going? Yep. In January 2006, small amounts of genetically <br /> engineered rice turned up in a shipment that was tested - we don't know why - by a French <br /> customer of Riceland Foods, a big rice mill based in Stuttgart, Ark. Because no transgenic <br /> rice is grown commercially in the U.S., the people at Riceland were stunned. At fast they <br /> figured that the test was a mistake or that tiny bits of genetically modified corn or soybeans <br /> had somehow gotten mixed up with rice during shipping. They said nothing. <br /> Then came another shock. Testing revealed that the genetically modified rice contained a <br /> strain of Liberty Link that had not been approved for human consumption. What's more, trace <br />