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Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns:

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The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is allowing test plots of corn and other crops to be used as factories for producing pharmaceutical drugs and industrial chemicals. Corn pollen can travel for miles so it is a particularly dangerous crop to allow for this purpose. Further, the USDA now appears ready to begin approving these "pharmcrops" for commercial growing.

The biotech company ProdiGene has twice been found to have violated USDA guidelines and their pharmaceutical corn nearly contaminated the human food supply. The contents of a grain elevator had to be destroyed in one case and 155 acres of regular corn had to be destroyed in another.

We have set up a special section on The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods web site where you can read news stories about the ProdiGene fiasco.

Read more about the ProdiGene contamination

The guidelines the USDA has established to keep these genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops from getting into the human food supply will not work. The USDA wants the growing season on these crops to be delayed from the planting of regular crops by two or three weeks. The guidelines do provide protection for human error which is bound to happen.

Read the USDA guidelines

The Biotech Industry Organization (BIO) wants to restrict these pharmaceutical crops from being planted in the large corn producing states of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana and parts of Nebraska, Ohio, Minnesota and Missouri.

Trade groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America and the National Food Processors Association only want non-food crops such as tobacco to be used for producing genetically engineered pharmaceutical drugs and industrial chemicals.

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods wants an immediate moratorium placed on the growing of all pharmaceutical drug plants. We are also encouraging Congress to hold hearings on this matter.