Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
My main concerns are the lack of control of the testing sites. In other words, those GMOs that are being tested by the corproations, and not yet by the FDA, are possibly sending their pollons to nearby farms and plantlife. What if they made their way into the ovule of plants on farms or in populated areas, and were ingested without propor testing? Is this a problem waiting to happen?
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I would say the problem of a pollen grain containing Bt being carried to another plant outside the testing area and pollinating that plant is much smaller than the case where somebody is spraying insecticide and it happens to blow outside the area of spray, onto some adjacent farmland. The latter can be immediately toxic; the former (pollen) has to satisfy several stringent conditions before any problems result (has to find a flower of the same species, has to land on the stigma, has to germinate, has to grow down the style, has to find an ovule, has to fertilize that ovule, has to produce a seed, seed has to germinate, seedling has to survive, seedling has to grow to adult, seedling has to be harvested and processed etc.)
So I would say that these testing sites should have to follow guidelines that are similar to those that any sprayer has to follow, but in general the likelihood that any problems will result is a lot smaller than those that might result from errant spray.