Won’t be to far down the road before some of us will be reading about the disastrous affects of this, for profit and believe me this is a for profit only venture. Despite the ‘green’ spin, this is about profit, control and control for profit. And NOTHING else.Round up contaminated everything and it wasn’t supposed to.. Creating superweeds galore.... but believe the company looking to make massive profits when they state this "self limiting moth" is hunky dory & environmentally friendly. Though it will undoubtedly generate lotsa green. FT's
Some weeds have built defences against multiple herbicides, making them even harder to manage. In one central Illinois field, researchers found a pigweed species resistant to five different classes of herbicide, one of which had never been used there, said Aaron Hager, professor in the University of Illinois’s crop sciences department.
Genetically Engineered Moth Brings Hope for Reducing insecticide use ( Obama was all about hope too. That didn't work out so good either)
"Oxitec’s self-limiting insects carry a gene that, when passed to offspring, prevents female caterpillars from surviving. Males with this gene are released to seek out and mate with wild females, resulting in fewer pest moths reaching adulthood in the next generation, thus crashing the pest population.The new study marks a historic milestone because it describes the first open-field release of any self-limiting insect in North America, and the world’s first open-field release of a self-limiting, genetically engineered agricultural pest.Entitled “First Field Release of a Genetically Engineered, Self-Limiting Agricultural Pest Insect: Evaluating its Potential for Future Crop Protection,” the study was published today in the peer-reviewed journal “Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology” and is free online for anyone to access.The Cornell researchers, led by Professor Anthony Shelton in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY, found that the engineered strain of diamondback moth had similar field behaviors to unmodified moths.After releasing the insects in several waves in a specially-planted circular cabbage field, the scientists subsequently recaptured the moths on pheromone traps and studied how far they had travelled and how many survived in real-world field conditions.They found that 95 percent of the moths of both strains remained within 35 metres of the release sites, and that both strains had a similar longevity after release. The researchers conclude in the paper that this new data, combined with complementary laboratory studies on mating behavior, indicate that bi-weekly releases of Oxitec self-limiting male diamondback moths should “effectively suppress populations of pest P. xylostella in the field.”
What about the unaccounted for 5%?
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