I was wondering if anyone out there in SANET land knows if the
EPA had to approve the release of bt Corn for sale. Since it
produces its own pesticide, wouldn't the EPA regs have to be
satisfied? Does anyone know if there was a Public Interest
Document on bt corn prepared for EPA?
kate
Butterfly, corn link rethought
A genetically modified form of the crop may not be as harmful to
monarch larvae as a lab study indicated.
By Andrea Knox
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Corn that has been genetically modified to kill a destructive
insect may not be as harmful to the monarch butterfly as was
feared. But it clearly poses some level of risk that needs to be
better understood.
That was the broad but inconclusive message from a scientific
symposium last week near Chicago sponsored by Monsanto Co.,
DuPont Co., and other companies that have staked their future on
the development of genetically engineered crops.
Those companies scrambled to fund additional research after
Cornell University entomologist John E. Losey reported in May
that monarch larvae in laboratory studies ate less, grew more
slowly and died more quickly after eating pollen from
genetically altered corn.
Overnight, the perceived threat to the photogenic
orange-and-black butterfly became a rallying point for critics
of genetically altered crops, who contend they cause
unanticipated environmental damage.
Losey cautioned at the time that results he obtained in the
laboratory needed to be confirmed in field tests. One question
was the extent to which monarchs in the wild would come into
contact with toxic levels of corn pollen.
Corn that is genetically modified has been given an extra gene
that manufactures Bacillus thuringiensis, which kills corn
borers. The toxin, which is harmless to humans, spreads through
the plant and into its pollen. The pollen is often blown onto
milkweed, the only plant eaten by monarch larvae.
The studies presented at last week's symposium generally found
that the toxic concentrations of pollen don't travel very far
beyond the cornfields. Losey also presented findings - again
from the laboratory and not from field tests - that butterflies
prefer to lay their eggs and feed on milkweed beyond the edges
of cornfields rather than in the fields.
"You put all this information together and it's pretty clear
that the worst-case scenarios [of butterfly kill-off] . . . are
unlikely to occur," said Galen Dively, a University of Maryland
entomologist who attended the conference.
However, John Pleasants of Iowa State University found that one
strain of genetically engineered corn produces a high level of
the poison and was toxic to butterflies at every level tested.
This strain of corn is said to account for only a small
percentage of the genetically altered crop.
The participants agreed that more studies need to be done,
particularly on whether butterflies in the wild use cornfields,
and the extent to which eating the pollen could cause harm
without killing the butterflies right away.
About 10 of the 20 papers at the symposium were funded with
$100,000 provided by the Agricultural Biotechnology Stewardship
Working Group, the industry consortium that also sponsored the
symposium.
While some of the scientists involved said they would prefer to
see funding from other sources, they said it wasn't likely to be
forthcoming.
"If industry doesn't support this research, it will be a long
time before it's done, because it's difficult to get money for
research on a noneconomic insect," said Chip Taylor, director of
Monarch Watch, an education, research and conservation program
at the University of Kansas.
The industry "wanted to do what we could, but we haven't gotten
to the point of funding additional research," said Doyle Karr, a
spokesman for Pioneer Hi-Bred International in Des Moines, Iowa.
Pioneer, a member of the biotechnology working group, is owned
by DuPont.
Karr said the industry was encouraged by the finding that "the
worst-case scenario isn't going to happen." But he agreed that
"there is definitely more we want to know."
Taylor estimated that genetically modified corn would kill 5
percent to 7 percent of all monarch butterflies at most.
However, he said, it might also alter migration patterns so that
monarchs would disappear from most of the United States.
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