[Market-farming] corn gluten

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Thu Jan 31 21:34:15 EST 2008


On Jan 31, 2008, at 7:50 PM, Robert Schuler wrote:

> Mark... I have been growing BT sweetcorn for the last 4 years with no 
> synthetic pesticides applied and the BT gene is totally natural. 
> Therefore if the corn was grown organically it should be organic.

The BT toxin is expressed continuously in every cell of the corn plant. 
There is nothing natural about that. Corn does not naturally express 
BT, and BT in a natural situation does not occur in such quantities. 
The corn plant has been artificially turned into a pesticide.

While BT not produced through GMO methods was acceptable for organic 
use, no responsible certifier would ever have approved an organic farm 
plan in which the farmer intended to continuously drench the field in 
the stuff. It was approvable for organic use in that form, not only 
because it was naturally occuring, but also because it broke down 
quickly, not persisting in the field.

One reason GMO's are not approved for organic use is because the 
techniques used for inserting genes in the plant may cause unexpected 
and poorly understood changes. Individual genes do not work in 
isolation within the cell or within the organism as a whole, let alone 
within the ecosystem as a whole. Work on understanding the 
interrelations among individual genes within a living organism is in 
its infancy. It's only recently been discovered, for instance, that 
some genes that were thought to be inactive are in fact regulating the 
expression of other genes.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
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