{"id":43497,"date":"2015-01-21T13:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T18:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=43497"},"modified":"2015-01-21T13:59:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T18:59:51","slug":"gmo-crops-dont-live-hype-regards-pest-control-research-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/gmo-crops-dont-live-hype-regards-pest-control-research-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"GMO-Crops Don’t Live Up To The Hype With Regards To Pest Control, Research Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research from the University of Arizona has shown us yet another example of the many ways in which GMO-crops (genetically modified organisms) fail to live up to the hype.<\/p>\n

In this case, the research found that the efficacy of pest control via GMO-use has been notably exaggerated — and that many assumptions about the technology\/approach and its effectiveness against common pests simply don’t match up with reality. These assumptions have been “overly optimistic” — as the researchers put it.<\/p>\n

\"Corn<\/a><\/p>\n

While no one that’s looked into the actual track-record of GMO-crops very deeply should be surprised by this, the new research is still, of course, quite welcome — and clearly shows another chink in the rhetorical armor, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Health Heathen<\/a><\/em> provides some thoughts and more information:<\/p>\n

There’s a level of “optimism” and hype that often accompanies discussions concerning GMO-crops that seems as though it would be far more at home in the world of marketing & sales, than in the scientific community — something that this new research shows is for good reason. Much of the talk surrounding GMO-crops is simply hype — ‘could of, would of, should of’, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a bit of background on the technology — some of the first GMO (transgenic) crops<\/a> to be grown commercially were those that were “engineered” to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) as a means of pest resistance. While this for a short-time worked to some degree or other, ‘pest’ populations rapidly came to be dominated by those resistant to the toxin(s) — greatly diminishing the effectiveness of the approach, if not nullifying it completely.<\/em><\/p>\n

In response to that, many biotech companies introduced Bt-crops making use of “pyramids” — producing multiple Bt-toxins in the same crop, all active against the same pest(s). This practice has been widespread throughout the US, India, Australia — and many other places — since 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n