8/2/2019 Transgenico Maiz Drought Resistent Failure Approved USDA 20mar12

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USDA Green-Lights Field Trials of

Monsanto Drought-Resistant Corn After

Admitting it Performs No Better ThanNatural Corn

I n a c co r d a n ce w i th t h e Ob a m a A d m i n is t r a t io n s n e w h a n d s -

o f f a p p r o a c h t o r e g u la t i n g G M O s , A P H I S d e ci d e d t o a c t u a lly

a p p r o v e M O N 8 74 6 0 e v en a f t er a cu r s o r y e v a lu a t i o n o f t h e d a t a

e x pose d i t a s a c om p l e t e fa i lu re .

By Ethan A. Huff , Natural News Report , 20 march 12

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA)Animal and Plant Health

Inspection Service (APHIS) does not even pretend to legitimately evaluate

genetically-modified organisms (GMO) before approving them anymore,

having recently green-lighted approval for a new variety of "drought-resistant"

GM corn produced by Monsanto that admittedly grows no better under drought

conditions than natural varieties do.

According to the Washington Post, APHIS fast-tracked the corn, known as

MON87460, without ever conducting an appropriate environmental risk

analysis on the crop's efficacy, which includes determining whether or not the

crop is even safe for humans or the environment. In fact, in accordance with the

Obama Administration's new hands-off approach to regulating GMOs, APHIS

decided to actually approve MON87460 even after a cursory evaluation of the

data exposed it as a complete failure.

"The reduced yield [trait] does not exceed the natural variation observed in

regionally-adapted varieties of conventional corn," wrote the USDA in an

earlier report on the crop published last fall. "Equally comparable varieties

produced through conventional breeding techniques are readily available in

irrigated corn production regions"

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(http://www.naturalnews.com/032453_GM_corn_USDA.html).

MON87460 is the first GMO to be approved with resistance to drought, as

opposed to a pesticide or herbicide. And even though many drought-adaptivevarieties of natural or hybrid corn already exist, Monsanto is pushing

MON87460 on farmers all across the Midwest, and primarily in the Western

plains where drought conditions are still severe, with promises that it will

translate into increased yields.

Based on its initial findings, however, as well as the fact that GM crops are

known to contaminate nearby conventional and organic crops, APHIS should

have wholly rejected MON87460 and told Monsanto to hit the road. Instead,thanks to embedded special interests throughout the USDA and the highest

levels of the federal government, this former regulatory body has become

nothing more than a bureaucratic rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry.

"[Bio]technology has been spectacularly unsuccessful at delivering complex

traits such as drought tolerance, which involve multiple genes and complex

interaction with the plant's environment," wrote Dr. Helen Wallace, director

ofGeneWatch U.K., in a piece last year on so-called drought-tolerant GM

crops. "Meanwhile, conventional breeding and new techniques such as marker-

assisted selection -- which uses knowledge of the plant's genome to inform

breeding, without engineering the plant, have produced a long string of

successes."

This article was published at NationofChange

at: http://www.nationofchange.org/usda-green-lights-field-trials-monsanto-

drought-resistant-corn-after-admitting-it-performs-no-bett-0. All rights are

reserved.

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