Why was StarLink GM Corn seed banned for human consumption? ?

Question

thanks

Answer 1

StarLink™ is a type of Bt pest-protected corn that received a split approval by the Environmental Protection Agency for use as animal feed but not for food. Approval for human consumption was withheld because the Bt Cry9c protein expressed in the corn had some attributes of an allergenic protein. For example, it was found to be relatively stable and was not broken down as rapidly by the human digestive system as similar proteins. However, no conclusive evidence was found to indicate that Cry9c was an allergen.

Basically, StarLink never was approved in order to appease people who believed that it was harmful, even though no evidence ever suggested that it was. Some of the corn had accidentally gotten into the human food supply, and that's when the uproar started. Please keep in mind that you will not find one sick, dying, or dead body from the use of GMO crops.

Answer 2

a small number of people suffered allergy reactions

Answer 3

It was not approved (distinct from banned) for sale for the purpose of human consumption. Now at the same time all naturally occurring varieties of peanut are permitted to be sold for human consumption despite the fact that we know, conclusively that some people will die from eating peanuts.

When introducing anything new into our food supply we take precautions that have never been required with plants that have been around a long time, even plants known to be dangerous.

Over centuries plant variants and even species have come into existence as a result of random gene splicing, recombinant DNA in the wild.  Some of those have been toxic, like deadly nightshade while closely related plants like tomato and potato are naturally occurring genetic modifications on the same theme.

The distinction when people tinker with genes is that  we may produce a food that resembles a well known species but is different enough to kill or harm us. In a natural environment we might have learned to distinguish and avoid the poisonous,

Yes, naturally genetically altered species have a history of killing, so we are alert to avoid widespread introduction of any variety that even might cause harm. We do not approve for sale, but we allow people to experiment by eating the non-approved. We do know that many people did eat Starlink corn with no known ill effect. But we did not have a really good double blind study with thousands of participants selected to at least try to  include people known to have other allergies.

People with known allergies are often specially cautious about exposing themselves to the unknown, particularly when there is no known medical treatment available.