Brian Fredericksen  wrote:
>Imagine this - a government that cares about  insects and the
environment instead of corporate profits.

I saw the article in the NY Times. Another example of lame reporting,
and knee jerk reaction to inadequate information. The article states:

> research this year indicates that larvae of the monarch butterfly exposed to the genetically modified corn "behave differently than other larvae."

They NEVER give any indication who did this research, where, etc. I
spent an hour this morning trying to find it, to no avail. I sure hope
that public policy is based on something more substantial than
unspecified research showing monarch caterpillars "behave
differently". It's quite obvious that there is a large group of people
who will latch onto anything that implicates Bt crops and are
oblivious to the bulk of the evidence.

I did find the study that they refer to later in the article:

> recent research showing that consumption of genetically modified "corn byproducts reduced growth and increased mortality of nontarget stream insects"

In this study they write: "we used laboratory feeding studies to
examine the effects of Bt corn byproducts on selected aquatic insect
taxa commonly found in headwater streams."

Those of us who remember the original Bt/Monarch episode remember that
the Cornell researchers found effects in the lab but that further
studies failed to find the predicted effects in the field.

> In response to the furor in the media and the public, a group of public and private scientists designed multi-faceted studies to answer questions about Bt corn pollen and the monarch butterfly. They published their findings as a group after rigorous scrutiny of their work by the scientific community.

> Their scientific evidence shows that the risk to the monarch butterfly by Bt corn pollen is negligible. The steps taken by these scientists represent a model for risk assessment research of genetically modified plants. Further, the work represents an important example of allowing science to guide decision making.

SEE:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/sites/monarch/

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