Canada, U.S. approve 'SmartStax' genetically engineered corn

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and its U.S. counterpart, the EPA, recently approved a new GE corn created by Monsanto and Dow. Called SmartStax, Dow President Jerome Peribere said the corn represents "game changing technology."

Monsanto and Dow partnered together on the stacked trait' corn in 2007. They are now seeking to have approvals in place around the world in time for the 2010 growing season. Monsanto and Dow have managed to minimize the usually-required precautions for SmartStax. Canada's approval will be reviewed in 2012, SmartStax corn is a unique product. It has eight genetic modifications, and not only is it Roundup-ready, allowing farmers to spray the entire crop with herbicides; SmartStax also has built-in protection against insects with Bt genetically added to the corn. The development of SmartStax has given Monsanto and Dow at least a two-year lead on their competition, Pioneer, which is also working on a GE stacked trait corn. Other benefits include reported "improved grain quality and yield opportunity." The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) criticized the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), saying that the agency has summarily "rubber-stamped" approval of the new biotech corn seed, noting that while CFIA normally publishes a "decision document" summarizing approval decisions, no such document has been released for SmartStax.

"This seems to confirm that the corn by-passed existing scientific assessment processes that have already been judged insufficient by the 2001 Royal Society of Canada Panel,"

said CBAN's coordinator, Lucy Sharrat, in a press release. When Monsanto and Dow first proposed the new GE corn product, SmartStax, they also proposed a reduction in the size of the area of a corn field that is required to be planted to non-GE corn. This reduction was promoted on page six in the collaborative agreement put out by Dow and Monsanto in 2007. In both Canada and the USA, the two companies managed to get a reduction in the refuge area from the required 20% to a mere 5%. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has not explained why it considers the risk for the stacked trait GE corn to be of less a risk than any other GE product that contains Bt. However, it is clear that garnering the reduction in refuge area is a big selling point for SmartStax, because now farmers will not have to plant as much of their corn fields with non-genetically engineered corn, thus harvest yields of the GE corn will be higher; although Monsanto and Dow say that increased yields will also result from the decrease in insect damage. Normally the government likes to have what are called refuge areas established because

"There is a risk that the viability of the technology will diminish as the proportion of planted Bt transgenic crops increases in Canada. To prevent or delay the onset of resistance in the European corn borer (ECB) and corn rootworm (CRW) populations, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) requires each registrant of Bt corn to implement an insect resistant management (IRM) strategy with producers."

CBAN is concerned that insect resistence to Bt is increasing, which means that in the near future this natural bacteria will be useless as a tool in fighting insect predation of food crops, an issue that is also a concern to organic farmers who use Bt. CBAN said that

"Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is a naturally occurring soil borne organism that can be used topically by organic farmers to control pests. The genes from Bt have been genetically engineered into corn to make the plant act as a pesticide. Because insects evolve quickly, they are expected to develop resistance to Bt, making this pest control option useless."

Dow told reporters in the United States that it expected SmartStax would be planted on three to four million acres next year. Dow is aiming to see 65 million acres planted with SmartStax in the U.S. by 2016. According to the Alberta Farm Express,

"Dow said it will use SmartStax as the platform to launch “future trait technologies” such as 2,4-D tolerance, and plans to roll out the first of those technologies in 2012."

Dow is a large corporation that makes a multitude of products, ranging from Agriculture and Food to Wire and Cable. Dow reported net income of $579 million for 2008. Monsanto is the largest company in the world. Monsanto's shares jumped in value after the announcement about SmartStax.