Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Voracious Worm Evolves to Eat Biotech Corn Engineered to Kill It - Wired Science

"First planted in 1996, Bt corn quickly became hugely popular among U.S. farmers. Within a few years, populations of rootworms and corn borers, another common corn pest, had plummeted across the midwest. Yields rose and farmers reduced their use of conventional insecticides that cause more ecological damage than the Bt toxin.

"By the turn of the millennium, however, scientists who study the evolution of insecticide resistance were warning of imminent problems. Any rootworm that could survive Bt exposures would have a wide-open field in which to reproduce; unless the crop was carefully managed, resistance would quickly emerge."

Yeah go ahead, put the food supply in the hands of corporations whose primary, and usually ONLY, motivation is raising their stock prices. What could possibly go wrong?

via boing boing

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