by many bioengineering companies. “Terminator” research, which has been halted by Monsanto and other major corporations, involves making GM plant seeds sterile so that farmers have to purchase new ones every year. Its critics envision a world where all farmers are at the wrath of large corporations, in a kind of “bioserfdom (Shand).” However, they ignore the fact that farmers will always be free to use natural crops in farming; if companies charge too much for modified plants, then they just won’t sell any. That is not to mention the fact that companies like Monsanto have spent millions of dollars on research, and if they could only sell seeds once then they would go out of business. Lastly, since all genetically engineered crops of a certain brand are genetically identical, even without “terminator” technology they naturally inbreed and the next generation of seeds is poor anyway. People have gotten angry about the concept of the “terminator” plant, without thinking through the issue thoroughly.A much larger constituency, however, is worried about bioengineered plants’ safety for man and the environment. Probably the largest outcry against genetically engineered crops was over the security of the monarch butterfly, which became the symbol of those worried about the environmental effects of GM plants. In August of 1998 Cornell entomologists reported that in a laboratory experiment almost half of monarch butterfly larvae, which feed almost exclusively on milkweed, died when they were fed milkweed dusted with pollen from insecticide-producing corn. However, it has been pointed out by many that this does not mean that the bioengineered corn is a threat to the monarch. For one, farmers with non-modified crops use the same insecticide produced by the corn, which when sprayed on milkweed also kills monarch larvae. More importantly, a concentration of pollen large enough to...
