{"id":17297,"date":"2017-10-15T09:35:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T23:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=17297"},"modified":"2017-10-15T09:35:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T23:35:22","slug":"have-monsanto-and-the-biotech-industry-turned-natural-bt-pesticides-into-gmo-super-toxins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=17297","title":{"rendered":"Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO \u201cSuper Toxins\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO \u201cSuper Toxins\u201d?<br \/>\nIs the supposed safety advantage of GMO crops over conventional chemical pesticides a mirage?<br \/>\nAccording to biotech lore, the Bt pesticides introduced into many GMO food crops are natural proteins whose toxic activity extends only to narrow groups of insect species. Therefore, says the industry, these pesticides can all be safely eaten, e.g. by humans.<br \/>\nThis is not the interpretation we arrived at after our analysis of the documents accompanying the commercial approval of 23 typical Bt-containing GMO crops, however (see Latham et al., 2017, just published in the journal Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews).<br \/>\nIn our publication, authored along with Madeleine Love and Angelika Hilbeck, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), we show that commercial GMO Bt toxins differ greatly from their natural precursors. These differences are important. They typically cause GMO Bt proteins to be more toxic. Worse, they also cause them to be active against many more species than natural forms of Bt toxins.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/10\/13\/have-monsanto-and-the-biotech-industry-turned-natural-bt-pesticides-into-gmo-super-toxins\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/10\/13\/have-monsanto-and-the-biotech-industry-turned-natural-bt-pesticides-into-gmo-super-toxins\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO \u201cSuper Toxins\u201d? Is the supposed safety advantage of GMO crops over conventional chemical pesticides a mirage? According to biotech lore, the Bt pesticides introduced into many GMO food crops are natural proteins whose toxic activity extends only to narrow groups of insect species. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=17297\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO \u201cSuper Toxins\u201d?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}