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August 22, 2001
Putting the blame for StarLink where it belongs
After all the dust has settled on the StarLink corn fiasco, who's to blame? David Erickson, a past chairman of the American Soybean Association, lays responsibility squarely on the shoulders of activists who "saw an opportunity and exploited it for all of its worth"; news outlets, which "abandoned their responsibility to fully explain the science and provide perspective on risk"; and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which "risked undermining public confidence in the regulatory system while increasing public concern over biotechnology."
Erickson argues in the Chicago Tribune that "we know enough already to say that low levels of StarLink pose minimal risk to health," and says that the EPA "messed up big time" in only approving the corn as animal feed in the first place. "In fact," writes Erickson, "for all the headlines, activist positioning, recalls and loss of markets, no illness has been linked to StarLink after nearly a year."
After all the dust has settled on the StarLink corn fiasco, who's to blame? David Erickson, a past chairman of the American Soybean Association, lays responsibility squarely on the shoulders of activists who "saw an opportunity and exploited it for all of its worth"; news outlets, which "abandoned their responsibility to fully explain the science and provide perspective on risk"; and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which "risked undermining public confidence in the regulatory system while increasing public concern over biotechnology."
Erickson argues in the Chicago Tribune that "we know enough already to say that low levels of StarLink pose minimal risk to health," and says that the EPA "messed up big time" in only approving the corn as animal feed in the first place. "In fact," writes Erickson, "for all the headlines, activist positioning, recalls and loss of markets, no illness has been linked to StarLink after nearly a year."
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