Monsanto and the Monarch Butterfly
8 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008
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Monsanto and the Monarch Butterfly
Abstract
This technical note, which outlines Monsanto's response to public claims of damage to monarch butterflies from Monsanto's Bt corn, is a good companion piece to cases involving new technology, particularly in the field of biotechnology and genetically modified organisms. Other issues addressed are crisis management, the reported effects of new technology on the environment, and good public relations.
Excerpt
UVA-E-0263
MONSANTO AND THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY
In the United States, many people—ordinary citizens, environmentalists, scientists, and nature lovers—have long treasured the beautiful orange and black monarch butterfly for its exquisite form and its amazing ability to migrate more than 1,000 miles to and from its over-wintering grounds in the mountains west of Mexico City and below California. The West Virginia Wildlife Organization cites the monarch butterfly as “among the most beautiful and familiar butterflies in North America.” To many people, the butterfly's spectacular transformation from yellow, white, and black-banded larvae into the delicate black and orange beauty is unequaled by any other species.
Because of this widespread admiration for the monarch butterfly, a 1999 Nature Magazine article suggesting that pollen from genetically modified corn was deleterious to the monarch butterfly immediately received extensive media attention and caused a public and scientific stir. The article, published by entomologist Dr. John E. Losey, behavioral ecologist Dr. Linda S. Rayor, and biologist Maureen E. Carter, focused on Monsanto's insect-resistant crop Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn.
Monsanto initially developed Bt corn with the aim of protecting farmers' corn crops from unruly infestations of the European corn borer. In 1996, Charles Mason published a study at Iowa State University estimating that annual losses of corn to uncontrolled European corn borer in a year of significantly high infestation could exceed $ 1 billion. European corn borers, like the monarch butterfly, are in the Lepidopteran class (moths and butterflies). Losey and his colleagues were concerned that the toxin present in Bt corn would also be poisonous to the monarch butterfly. While monarchs do not live in corn fields and lay their eggs on the corn crops as European corn borers do, monarchs are often in close proximity to corn fields while they feed on the milkweed plants running alongside the fields of corn.
In a study that “visually matched” pollen densities observed in the field on milkweed plants, Losey and his colleagues did a four-day laboratory study on five, three-day-old monarch larvae feeding on milkweed dusted with pollen from Bt corn. They found that the monarchs feeding on the milkweed covered in Bt pollen ate less, grew more slowly, and had a 56 percent mortality rate as compared to the controls feeding on milkweed dusted with non-Bt corn that had a 0 percent mortality rate.
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Keywords: business ethics, environmental issues, ethical issues, public relations/publicity, biotechnology
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