Experimental GMO Wheat Crop Fails to Deter Pests

Biotech’s claims that genetically modified crops are more resistant to bugs seem to be dismissed like yesterday’s pastries, especially when their crops so obviously fail to deliver on the promise. So why are farmers still planting GM seed?

In a recent biotech debacle, a UK-based biotech company wasted over $5 million on an experimental GM wheat trial.

Rothamsted Research says it is “disappointed” that the transgenic crop, known as “whiffy wheat,” utterly failed to deter aphids. The crop was succumbing to the same amount of insect damage as real wheat, even though it was genetically engineered to be resistant to aphids.

The company’s press releases in 2012 were glowing testimonials of how wonderful wiffy wheat would be, even calling it ‘the new pest control.’ But it is increasingly obvious that no matter how good the propaganda is written, GM crops are continuing to fail at every Big Biotech claim made. Namely these are:

• ‘Pest-resistant’ trans-genic plants are better than non-GM plants

• GM crops will feed the world better than the crops that have been developed over thousands, if not millions of years, with higher crop yields. As evidenced in the report, Failure to Yield, written by the Union of Concerned Scientist, we can see that more billions in tax payer and private funds have been funneled into GM engineering.

• GM crops somehow improve soil condition. This has also been proven to be the exact opposite of what happens to soil that is heavily sprayed with GM chemicals – specifically herbicides, insecticides, and non-organic fertilizers, which chelate important minerals from the soil, thus making plants’ immune systems weaker and our food supply less nutritious. Glyphosate was first patented as a chelator in 1964 by Stauffer Chemical Co. It was patented by Monsanto and introduced as an herbicide in 1974. According to Dr. Huber, an award-winning scientist and professor emeritus of plant pathology at Purdue University for the past 35 years, “It’s important to realize that glyphosate is not ‘just’ an herbicide.” It was first patented as a mineral chelator.

Despite ‘wiffy wheat’s’ failure, the company is blaming its high-dollar loses on the fact that it had to build high fences and high tech security systems to keep people in the UK, who overwhelmingly refuse GM crops, from destroying the frankenfood that they don’t want to see in their food supply.