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Subject: Market Farming
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- From: Leigh <lh AT pressroom.com>
- To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
- Subject: Genetically Engineered Corn
- Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 23:02:10 -0500
Title: Genetically Engineered Corn
OK, let's think about
this for a second. Spraying bt on your corn, or on your cabbage is a
different thing completely than corn or cabbage that has bt as part
of its genetic makeup. Sure, Bt sprayed on a crop is reasonable
benign. When I have cabbage loopers I spray bt, it inhibits
growth, kills the caterpillar. It saves my cabbage crop. The bt
breaks down, is gone. Someone eats the cabbage, there's no
bt.
However, this isn't the case
with genetically manipulated corn. The bt is always there, Its there
when the plant's growing, its there in the corn, Its there in the
stalk that's turned back into the ground (assuming the bt is a sweet
corn).
This brings up a whole set of
potential problems that bt used as a topical insecticide doesn't
have.
But beside the allergies, if
they exist, my real problem with bt corn is the small minded, short
term profit seeking of the company that is making it. Bt is a
very useful solution to caterpillar damage. However, by
inserting Bt genes into corn the scientist that did it, and they
company that markets it knows (its in their literature) that this
will create bt resistant caterpillars. They know (and its in
their literature), that within several decades (if not sooner) there
will be bt resistant insects. That by creating and marketing bt
corn the company is making a short term profit at the expense of the
long term effectiveness of bt.
And finally, I find farmers
that are growing this crop as either woefully uninformed (meaning,
they actually believe seed salesman when they tell them a line) or
they are knowledgeable and therefore irresponsible by ruining this
effective insecticide for farmers of the future.
That is the real issue
here.
-
Genetically Engineered Corn,
Jill Taylor Bussiere, 03/23/2002
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, HackettShark, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Mmneedham, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Jill Taylor Bussiere, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Franklin W. Davis, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Mmneedham, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Franklin W. Davis, 03/23/2002
- Genetically Engineered Corn, Leigh, 03/23/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Don Maroc, 03/24/2002
- Genetically Engineered Corn, Franklin W. Davis, 03/24/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, Leigh, 03/24/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, jay gee, 03/25/2002
- RE: Genetically Engineered corn, Steve Gilman, 03/25/2002
- RE: Genetically Engineered corn, HackettShark, 03/25/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, sunnfarm, 03/25/2002
- Re: Genetically Engineered Corn, jay gee, 03/25/2002
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