The past few years had seen a number of breakthroughs in the study of Cytogenics. Big Agriculture was looking for a way to speed up the farming process and wanted to figure out how to grow corn in 1 week instead of the standard 60 - 80 days. They created a new plant based virus that rapidly affected the corn's cells, aging it at a rate of 1000% a day until it reached 80 - 95% of its maximum age. Not only was virus effective at aging the plant based cells to maturity, it was highly contagious and spread airborne as the virus quickly looked for younger cells that would continue to give it energy. As the cells matured, either it went to the it's next host or it would die. The results were amazing. Corn could now be harvested in only 5 - 6 days and the virus only had to be introduced to a small portion of the population in order to be effective.
Cytogen patented it's corn growing technique. It quickly set off a marketing campaign and named the new corn as Presto-Corn. Explaining that Presto-Corn would allow the world to use 100% Ethanol and resolve the energy issue for many years to come. With the allure of cheap and easy energy, the process was quickly approved the by FDA and the FDA. While the Virus-Modified Corn has been deemed safe to Humans and had never made the jump to animal cells, it has never been tested or meant for consumption by animals. This caused two things to happen, many people began to protest the Presto-corn much like they protested Genetically Modified produce. The other problem is the new modified corn was seen as more valuable to farmers and they started using the corn in their farmlands instead of the other corn, causing the costs of regular corn to spike. This caused an avalanche effect with traditional farmers starting to illegally purchase and feed presto-corn to their livestock which eventually was consumed by humans. With more and more exposure, the virus mutated and made the jump to humans.