[Market-farming] Bt Corn
STEVE GILMAN
stevegilman at verizon.net
Tue Feb 26 23:21:27 EST 2008
Hi Kristen,
I don't think the Cornell presentation exonerates transgenic Bt at
all, although it certainly attempts to. It's a bit dated for one
thing -- recent studies are showing bollworm resistance on Bt cotton,
for example. And while damage to Monarchs as well as other beneficial
pest-controlling and pollinating insects DOES indeed occur on a
regular basis, this has become somewhat of a PR red herring -- it is
this resistance potential that is most worrisome. Organic farmers
have successfully used the non-transgenic, short-duration-in-the-
field spray varieties for 40 years, but with the Bt genetics fully
expressed in every part of the plants -- stalks, leaves, roots as
well as the corn or cotton, there's a very real danger of intractable
insect resistance, ultimately rendering it useless. And now that the
corn growers are planting fence post to fence post for the highly
subsidized ethanol market, the requisite "refugia" -- the adjacent
fields that are supposed to be planted to non-biotech varieties to
thwart insect resistance -- are falling by the wayside in the
scramble to increase production.
Finally, totally under-investigated is what the transgenic Bt is
doing to the soil ecosystem. Bt is derived from a natural soil
organism and the Bt transgenes -- expressed through the crop's root
exudates -- are extremely persistent and very much at home there.
Just as "superweeds" are a very real concern with the transgenic
Round Up Ready plant varieties, they pale with the potential down
sides to possible "super-microbes." Add in the toxic effects when fed
to rats and further recent accidental releases of uncertified-for-
human-consumption varieties (a la Starlink) we find ourselves
starring as Guinea pigs in one of the largest uncontrolled
proprietary experiments ever foisted on the environment and on human
eaters -- all because the Biotech Big Boys got a green light from the
start under the Quayle/Reagan Council of Competiveness -- the jury's
not out ... it's non-existent.
Steve
Ruckytucks Farm
On Feb 26, 2008, at 9:58 PM, market-farming-request at lists.ibiblio.org
wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:38:08 -0500
> From: "Wilmer, Kristen" <kristen.wilmer at uconn.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Bt Corn
> To: <market-farming at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID:
>
> <40AC6D73C2B95C4CA21B26B7BF380C4001C68C6F at EXCHANGED.mgmt.ad.uconn.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi folks,
>
> For anyone who is interested, there is a good, brief summary of the
> studies that have been conducted on Bt corn and monarch butterflies at
> the following website:
>
> http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/issues/monarchs.html
>
> This website is in my opinion a pretty objective source of information
> about the topic (it doesn't present any analysis, just information
> from
> the studies). It's hosted by Cornell, the institution where the
> research team was based that originally published the Nature article
> suggesting that Bt corn harmed monarchs, and goes into some detail
> about
> the research findings and how the later studies were organized and
> funded (there was some industry funding as well as public funding). I
> agree that it's important to be skeptical of any studies that are
> funded
> by people with interests in particular research results, but I think
> it's also important to take this on a case by case basis and judge
> studies on the full mix of funds that contribute to them, the mix of
> scientists involved, and the quality of methods and peer review. The
> USDA is a very diverse organization with many different programs and
> scientists (as is Cornell, to a somewhat lesser extent) so I have
> trouble thinking of it as a single entity with clear motives in any
> one
> direction. The motives of industry are certainly clearer, and any
> study
> with industry funding introduces some doubt, but at the same time
> public
> funding is limited and industry is under pressure to take
> responsibility
> for funding studies to assess the risk of GM products.
>
> For what it's worth, my own subjective judgment from reading these
> studies is that it looks like the varieties of Bt corn that are
> currently grown are unlikely to have a negative impact on monarch
> butterflies in the field, and there is evidence that the impact of Bt
> corn on beneficials may be less than that of spraying Bt or other
> insecticides. That still leaves uncertainty about these and other
> impacts, and I'm not inclined to plant Bt corn myself for various
> reasons, but in this case I don't think the evidence points to clear
> environmental costs. I think the jury's still out on many of the
> overall costs/benefits of Bt corn (as with many other farming
> practices).
>
> Kristen
> Northeast CT
>
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