Pollen-Tracking Technology Can Help Assess Crop Risk.

Tiny grains of pollen from genetically modified farm crops drifting across America's heartland now can be tracked to determine whether they will land on non-biotech fields. AirZone Inc., a Canadian air-quality measurement company, is reapplying its technology used to track air pollutants to measure pollen dispersal in food crops.

This re-engineering of an existing technology can be a boon to underwriters and risk managers who handle product-recall insurance accounts for food manufacturers and distributors. Genetically modified organism (GMO) product contamination is a growing concern for insurers, as food manufacturers deal with new issues such as labeling standards and foreign import restrictions.

AirZone's models can be used to assess the risk of contamination and the effectiveness of risk-management strategies. The technology could be used by farmers who want to reduce the GMO traces in their crops.

For insurers, the technology can be used to assess risk of contamination, said Franco DiGiovanni, an air quality modeler for AirZone. "The models can be used to simulate years and years of field data," DiGiovanni said. "For example, you can ascertain how much of a risk a corn farm in Nebraska has of contaminating fields miles away."

To measure how much pollen flows a certain distance, the modeling technology takes into account the distance, wind speed, size of the pollen grain and the turbulence of the air. The sophisticated computer models also can produce probabilities of how many grains of pollen will fall to the ground or get caught on a plant.

Biotech foods are not generally accepted in Japan and Europe. Ian Harrison, an underwriter for Lloyd's of London Syndicate Beazley, said that "Europeans don't like" genetically modified products and have demanded traceability in the food chain. European consumers want the bar code that appears on food packaging to contain information on the food's origin and whether it is genetically modified. Japan's Health Ministry implemented a plan to make sure no GMO corn is shipped to Japan, which buys 30% of U.S. corn exports. In the United States, several food manufacturers have pledged to sell foods that are free of GMOs and label their foods as such.

Harrison said the product-recall and contamination insurance market produces $100 million annually in premium. Beazley is a principal writer of product-recall and contamination insurance, along with American International Group.

Beazley's Total Recall product protects food and drink companies from economic loss, including business interruption caused by malicious or accidental contamination.

This issue came to the forefront last year, when traces of the GMO variety of corn called StarLink were found in Taco Bell taco shells, spurring Kraft Foods to voluntarily recall 2.9 million boxes of the product. This variety of corn, produced by Aventis Crop Services Inc., was genetically engineered to produce a protein that would be poisonous to insect larvae. StarLink corn was approved only for animal consumption, because of possible allergic reaction in humans.

In April 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Panel reported there is a "medium likelihood" that StarLink protein is a potential allergen. Given the current low levels of StarLink already in the U.S. diet, the EPA said there is a "low probability" of allergic reactions in the U.S. population exposed to the corn.

Regardless, StarLink was pulled off the market, and the federal government is buying back StarLink-contaminated seed, even though it makes up just 0.4% of the U.S. corn crop, according to the Boston Globe.