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US company Monsanto has the portfolio with the highest proportion (60 percent) of pesticides that are particularly toxic to humans and the environment. However, Monsanto only ends up in the middle of the overall ranking due to its small share of the market.
the last few weeks beekeepers have reported staggering losses in Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio after their hives foraged on pesticide-treated corn fields. Indiana too, two years ago. What's going on in the Corn Belt? No farmer in their right mind wants to poison pollinators. When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major pesticide exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, "You know, I held out for years on buying them GE seeds, but now I can't get conventional seeds anymore. They just don't carry 'em." This leaves us with two questions: 1) What do GE seeds have to do with neonicotinoids and bees? and 2) How can an Iowa corn farmer find himself feeling unable to farm without poisoning pollinators? In other words, where did U.S. corn cultivation go wrong?
A group of plant scientists is warning federal regulators that action is needed to mitigate a growing problem with biotech corn that is losing its resistance to plant-damaging pests. The stakes are high - corn production is critical for food, animal feed and ethanol production, and farmers have increasingly been relying on corn that has been genetically modified to be toxic to corn rootworm pests. "This is not something that is a surprise... but it is something that needs to be addressed," said Joseph Spencer, a corn entomologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the University of Illinois. Spencer is one of 22 academic corn experts who sent a letter dated March 5 to the Environmental Protection Agency telling regulators they are worried about long-term corn production prospects because of the failure of the genetic modifications in corn aimed at protection from rootworm.
05/17/99 BMA CALLS FOR BAN ON GM CROPS AND FOOD By Maxine Frith and Eileen Murphy, PA News The British Medical Association today called for an open- ended ban on the introduction of genetically-modified crops and food. Sir William Asscher (correct), chairman of the BMA's Board of Science and Education, said more research was needed into the health and environmental impacts of so-called Frankenstein foods. The Board today published an interim statement on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and food, calling for strict regulation and assessment of crop trials and other tests. It made 19 recommendations, including an open-ended moratorium on the commercial planting of GM crops, a ban on releasing GMOs into the environment, and a review of the World Trade Agreement to ensure that Governments rather than companies determine whether imports of GM foods and seed are restricted.
Over the last 15 years, U.S. corn cultivation has gone from a crop requiring little-to-no insecticides and negligible amounts of fungicides, to a crop where the average acre is grown from seeds treated or genetically engineered to express three different insecticides (as well as a fungicide or two) before being sprayed prophylactically with RoundUp (an herbicide) and a new class of fungicides that farmers didn’t know they “needed” before the mid-2000s. A series of marketing ploys by the pesticide industry undergird this story.
Then, as if on cue, Monsanto introduced three different strains of patented, GE corn between 1997 and 2003 (RoundUp Ready, and two Bt–expressing variants aimed at controlling the European Corn Borer and corn root worm). Clothianidin entered the U.S. market under conditional registration in 2003, and in 2004 corn seed companies began marketing seeds treated with a 5X level of neonicotinoids (1.25 mg/seed vs. .25). … and in the space of a decade, U.S. corn acreage undergoes a ten-fold increase in average insecticide use. By 2007, the average acre of corn has more than three systemic insecticides — both Bt traits and a neonicotinoid. Compare this to the early 1990s, when only an estimated 30-35% of all corn acreage were treated with insecticides at all.
Originally posted by Heresy
First of all, EACH GM PRODUCT IS DIFFERENT.I thought I should point this out.
My second point is that someone accidentally produced a poisonous potato a few decades ago that poisoned a bunch of people (too much solanine) by normal selective breeding. So, all new foods need to be checked.
My third point is, duh, some of the plants contained self generated pesticide that yopu couldn't wash off. What did Monsanto, and the rest of the world, expect?