Despite a good crop of soft white wheat, uncertainty hangs heavy over this year’s harvest because of the discovery in late April of a small number of genetically modified wheat plants on a farm in northeastern Oregon. The plants, engineered to withstand the herbicide Roundup, had never been approved for commercial use and weren’t supposed to be growing there.
The mystery surrounding the winter wheat plants in Oregon has only deepened since an unidentified farmer found them in what was supposed to be a fallow field. Testing by Oregon State University determined the plants were resistant to glyphosate – the active ingredient in Roundup and many other “wide-spectrum” herbicides. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, soon traced them to field tests of genetically modified wheat – known as MON71800 — by the agribusiness and chemical giant Monsanto a decade ago.
Makes you wonder: what else is out there?
photo by Carl Kiilsgaard / for NBC News
