The full Senate has not yet considered the CJS Appropriations.
I posted this elsewhere on the thread before seeing your post:
They marked it up in subcommittee yesterday (here's a brief report.), but it hasn't been considered by the full Appropriations committee yet. That's tomorrow. Then it will be some time before it finds its way to the Senate floor.
You can track the progress using this page from Thomas.
The bill referenced in the article is the House version of the bill....
They marked it up in subcommittee yesterday (here's a brief report), but it hasn't been considered by the full Appropriations committee yet. That's tomorrow. Then it will be some time before it finds its way to the Senate floor.
You can track the progress using this page from Thomas.
The bill referenced in the article is the House version of the bill....
If this Bt corn becomes widespread, Bt as an insecticide has only a few years of useful life.
Concerns about insect resistance to Bt predate Bt crops. Insects resistant to the sprayed form of Bt have been found in the past, and there is evidence that the sprayed form of Bt might be more likely to induce resistance than Bt plants.
In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that Bt plants may be a potent weapon in the fight against development of Bt resistance. The sprayed form of Bt contains a cocktail of different compounds made by the Bt bacteria, many of which are toxic to insects; each different compound is encoded by a different gene. Bt crops today express only one of these genes, producing only one of these compounds. If insects were to gain resistance because of exposure to a particular Bt toxin produced in a plant, it is likely that they would be resistant to that particular toxin only, and would still be susceptible to other Bt toxins.
Future versions of Bt crops will be even more effective at staving off resistence through the technology of "gene stacking," which involves putting multiple genes into a single plant variety. Although current versions of Bt crops produce only a single form of Bt toxin, future plants can be generated that produce two or more forms. To survive, insects would have to be resistant to each form of the toxin. The probability that insects with multiple resistance would arise in an insect population is extremely small.
And, to top it all off, preventing insect resistance is obviously in the interest of those companies producing Bt crops. If they use the technology in such a way as to speed up the inevitable resistance cycle (and it's inevitable, given enough time, in any pesticide application, genetically-modified or otherwise), they diminish the future profitability of their product.
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The full Senate has not yet considered the CJS Appropriations.
I posted this elsewhere on the thread before seeing your post:
They marked it up in subcommittee yesterday (here's a brief report.), but it hasn't been considered by the full Appropriations committee yet. That's tomorrow. Then it will be some time before it finds its way to the Senate floor.
You can track the progress using this page from Thomas.
The bill referenced in the article is the House version of the bill....
They marked it up in subcommittee yesterday (here's a brief report), but it hasn't been considered by the full Appropriations committee yet. That's tomorrow. Then it will be some time before it finds its way to the Senate floor.
You can track the progress using this page from Thomas.
The bill referenced in the article is the House version of the bill....
It's scheduled for a February 2004 flight. Dunno if it will slip further or not.
Concerns about insect resistance to Bt predate Bt crops. Insects resistant to the sprayed form of Bt have been found in the past, and there is evidence that the sprayed form of Bt might be more likely to induce resistance than Bt plants.
In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that Bt plants may be a potent weapon in the fight against development of Bt resistance. The sprayed form of Bt contains a cocktail of different compounds made by the Bt bacteria, many of which are toxic to insects; each different compound is encoded by a different gene. Bt crops today express only one of these genes, producing only one of these compounds. If insects were to gain resistance because of exposure to a particular Bt toxin produced in a plant, it is likely that they would be resistant to that particular toxin only, and would still be susceptible to other Bt toxins.
Future versions of Bt crops will be even more effective at staving off resistence through the technology of "gene stacking," which involves putting multiple genes into a single plant variety. Although current versions of Bt crops produce only a single form of Bt toxin, future plants can be generated that produce two or more forms. To survive, insects would have to be resistant to each form of the toxin. The probability that insects with multiple resistance would arise in an insect population is extremely small.
And, to top it all off, preventing insect resistance is obviously in the interest of those companies producing Bt crops. If they use the technology in such a way as to speed up the inevitable resistance cycle (and it's inevitable, given enough time, in any pesticide application, genetically-modified or otherwise), they diminish the future profitability of their product.