Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Kenyth:
The plants are toxic to the bugs too? Wouldn't they have checked for that in the initial testing?
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Not the plants - but the herbicides and the quantities used in conjunction with GM crops - combined with the lack of cover provided by the diminished weed population.
You see, most GM crops are not just engineered to be disease, frost etc resistant - they are designed to survive extremely strong concentrations of herbicide. The farmer can spray his fields with a highly toxic level of herbicide, safe in the knowledge that it will kill all weeds - unfortunately, at those levels it kills insects too.
Furthermore, not reported in the UK results because they were
short term (6 years) is the fact that in Canada, after weeds initially dissappeard from the fields - new varieties began to appear that were resistent even to these highly toxic levels of herbicides. These new 'Super-weeds' are now widespread, giving farmers a new headache to deal with.