The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) represents the entire U.S. corn wet milling industry, including manufacturers of corn refined ingredients such as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), dextrose and maltodextrins. Corn refined ingredients are used in a number of different food and beverage products, including baked goods, carbonated beverages, cereals, condiments, confections, dairy products, and snacks. As the January 1, 2022 mandatory compliance date for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard nears, CRA and its member companies have been asked whether our ingredients qualify as “bioengineered” (BE). Under USDA’s BE Standard, highly refined foods or ingredients that do not contain detectable modified genetic material are not BE foods.
To demonstrate the non-BE status of key corn ingredients produced by our members, CRA asked a third party to collect validation test results from CRA member companies and to subsequently provide the results to CRA on a company blinded basis for review and analysis. The refined corn ingredients tested were: HFCS 42, HFCS 55, monohydrate dextrose, corn syrup (dextrose equivalence from <30 to >70), and maltodextrin (dextrose equivalence from <10 to 15). Validation testing conducted by CRA member companies aligned with current USDA BE Instructions on Testing Methods, utilizing end product polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, the most widely used and commercially accepted test method for determining whether modified genetic material is detectable in a food or ingredient. CRA then reviewed and analyzed the blinded member company results and confirmed that data for all validation testing results demonstrated a unanimous absence of detectable modified recombinant DNA (rDNA) in each of the tested ingredients.
In sum, the results make clear that the tested ingredients do not require a mandatory BE disclosure. CRA limits this conclusion to the specific ingredients enumerated above and produced by CRA members in the U.S., and does not extend this conclusion more broadly to these ingredients when produced by non-CRA companies.