New Studies Show Modified
Corn No Threat To Monarchs

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Remember the brouhaha of a few months back when researchers announced that genetically modified corn was a threat to monarch butterflies? Well, never mind.

It turned out to be another one of those "grantsmanship" games in which researchers announce "preliminary data" designed not to inform but to excite — and thereby to extract grant money for "further study."

Well, additional data is now in, and it shows, not surprisingly, that genetically altered corn is no big deal to monarchs. Of course, they'd still like to do more studies.

Current research on the corn's toxicity is not yet extensive enough to determine any conclusive impact on the monarch, said Richard Hellmich, a U.S. Agriculture Department researcher at Iowa State University.

Scientists earlier this month released 17 separate studies in response to a May report by Cornell University that linked the deaths of monarch larvae with pollen from genetically-altered Bt corn.

The corn — which contains a bacteria that kills certain insect pests — is one of the most widely planted genetically-modified crops in the United States. The Cornell study said caterpillars that eventually turn into monarch butterflies died after eating pollen from Bt corn.

The study appeared in the journal Nature.

Research presented recently, however, shows that while one variety of Bt corn could endanger the butterfly, other types do not.

``A lot of data presented was overwhelmingly positive,'' Hellmich said.

Stanford University entomologist Stuart Weiss agreed, saying a ``toxic cloud of pollen'' feared to be threatening butterfly populations ``is clearly not the case.''

Scientists conducted field research across the United States and Canada. More than half of the funding for the various research came from the Agriculture Department and biotechnology firms, some of which manufacture Bt pollen.

Manufactured by Novartis AG, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. and Monsanto Co., Bt corn is laboratory-designed to produce a natural pesticide that kills the corn-destroying European corn borer. The altered strain accounted for more than 25 percent of the 80 million acres of corn planted in the United States in 1998.

The European Commission, which enforces rules for the 15-member European Union, cited the Cornell study this summer in delaying approval of pending requests to sell the corn variety, and Mexican environmental activists urged their government to ban its import and use.

The kicker in the monarch story — little noted in the popular press and deliberately ignored by anti-modification activists as well as the trade-resistant EU Commission — was that monarch caterpillars don't eat corn to begin with. Corn, genetically modified or otherwise, is not on their diet, and the caterpillars don't even have access to corn pollen because they are not there when the pollen is.

In short, it was a pointless project to begin with. But it got attention.