Did GM Corn Kill the Cows?
B. McPherson A little song about where big Agro seems to be taking us. Syngenta, the makers of GM corn Bt176 have been hauled into court. The corporation faces criminal charges for suppressing information from one of their own studies into the safety of the engineered product. This GM product has been discontinued since 2007. The corn labelled Bt176 contains a bacterial gene that confers resistance to the corn borer maggot. You may know the Bt part best from the reference to aerial spraying containing the Bt ( Bacillus thurugiensis ) element. The trouble started when a German farmer who participated in an approved study feeding his dairy cattle Bt176. His cows started getting sick and dying. At the end of it he had lost 65 dairy cattle. Syngenta compensated him for five cows but denied responsibility. He took them to court and lost, leaving him in further debt. During a civil lawsuit brought against the company by the farmer however, Syngenta refused to admit that...