On November 28, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a memo which identified the failure of Monsanto’s Bt corn to prevent “unexpected” rootworm damage to the corn crop. The EPA stated that at least four states, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nebraska, are seeing “severe efficacy issues” for Monsanto’s Bt corn. The agency also noted problem areas in four additional states, Colorado, South Dakota, Minnesota, and western Wisconsin, and asked that they be monitored in the future.
Shaking its regulatory finger at Monsanto, the EPA said in no uncertain terms that the company’s resistance monitoring is “inadequate and likely to miss early resistance events.”
“It’s one of those delectable reports written not by political appointees or higher-ups, but rather by staff scientists reporting what they see,” commented Tom Philpott, the food and agricultural blogger at MotherJones. Monsanto, for its part, is sticking to its PR talking points and denying the existence of a problem. Although the company reportedly is taking the EPA’s report seriously, “Monsanto continues to believe there’s no scientific confirmation of resistance to its Bt corn,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg news. This mirrors the sentiments the company expressed in September, a month after the Iowa State University published a study showing resistance by rootworm after ingesting the company’s Bt corn. “Our Cry3Bb1 protein is effective, and we don’t have any demonstrated field resistance,” assured a company representative in September.
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