SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Farmers Skirt Rules on Gene-Altered Crops, Report Says
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
As many as 25 percent of the American farmers growing genetically engineered corn are no longer complying with federal rules intended to maintain the resistance of the crops to damage from insects, according to an advocacy group's report released Thursday.
The increase in farmers skirting the rules, from fewer than 10 percent a few years ago, raises the risk that insects will develop resistance to the toxins in the corn that are meant to kill them, the report says. And it raises questions about whether the Environmental Protection Agency and the agricultural biotechnology industry are adequately enforcing the rules.
The data "should be a wake-up call to E.P.A. that the regulatory system is not working," Gregory Jaffe, the report's author, wrote in a letter Thursday to Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the federal agency. Mr. Jaffe is the biotechnology project director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington advocacy group that does not oppose genetically engineered crops but favors stricter regulation.
Read more...
Click here to listen to podcasts of American Scientist Pizza Lunches, informal lectures where scientists present new research to non-scientists. Originally intended for science communicators in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, the audio slideshows are now available to anyone online. New talks are posted periodically during the academic year.
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.