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market-farming - Re: Fly parasties/trichagrama

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Jill Taylor Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Fly parasties/trichagrama
  • Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 22:23:29 -0500


Sent on by Jill
*************
Defenders Rural Updates!
May 22, 2002

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2. BT CORN: OF PIGS AND BUTTERFLIES

When Bt corn was first released several years ago environmentalists
flagged concerns that the pollen, which contains Bacillus thuringiensi,
would prove fatal to threatened species of butterflies,
moths and other pollinators. During the ensuing debate, the
Monarch Butterfly became a poster-child for organizations calling
for more stringent federal analysis on the impacts of new biotech
products. Now the Iowa Farm Bureau has just released anecdotal
reports that Bt Corn may also harm the ability of pigs to reproduce
and the news is spreading like wild fire. It seems the IFB ran an
article that told the story of four hog producers in Iowa that all had
precipitous declines in hog reproduction. After checking for all the
usual causes including diseases, the only common demoninator was
that each producer, all within a 15 mile radius, fed their animals Bt
corn. The remarkable part of the story is that each producer
experienced nearly identical "pseudopregnancies" in their pigs with
reproductivity plummeting 80% in one case. One of the producers
subsequently switched back to regular non-Bt corn, and
pseudopregnancy is no longer a problem. The IFB has been
flooded with calls on the subject reporting that the story had not
even hit the streets when the phone began ringing off the hook.








  • Fly parasties/trichagrama, Jerry Ford, 05/22/2002
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Re: Fly parasties/trichagrama, Jill Taylor Bussiere, 05/23/2002

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