A NEW TYPE OF PESTICIDE

The most important kind of energy is doubtlessly the solar ener-gy that goes into agriculture. The per-acre yields of modern agriculture are mainly due to pesticides, which is evidently the reason why the social engineers and de-industrializers con-centrated on them. Using lies and distortions about thin-shelled bird eggs and chemicals in mothers' milk they forced the totally unjustified ban on DDT, perhaps the most successful pesticide in history. Substitute chemical pesticides went the same way, smeared by the types of lies by which alar and dioxin were banned (neither of which is a pesticide, but the propaganda was the same).

What the Green Church teaches the sham-environmentalists is that only man dislikes and kills pests that damage crops. In reality, or course, these plants dislike them no less and have their own defenses against pests and parasites. "Second generation" pesti-cides reinforce these defenses.

Monsanto Co. has engineered plants that produce their own pesticides [AtE Jun88]. But there is news about engineered, biologically produced pesticides for use on regular vegetable crops.

Many plants secrete toxins against harmful insects; this is probably the main reason why so many natural foods contain small quantities of carcinogens. Natural toxins produced by bacteria kill many pests that prey on vegetables and other crops. Bacillus thuringiensis, for example, produces a toxin that kills the diamondback moth and other caterpillar pests that attack cab-bage, lettuce and other vegetables. The gene responsible for producing this toxin has been identified and inserted into the cell of another bacterium which can be mass-produced. A similar gene producing toxins against the Colorado Beetle, a potato killer, has also been mass produced this way.

Such natural toxins, whether manufactured by the original producer or aided by genetic engineering, have been used before; however, they degrade quickly in the natural environment and soon become ineffective. But now the California company Mycogen has come up with a new angle: after the cells are mass produced by the genetically engineered cells in the new bacteria, they are killed and encapsulated in a "biocapsule" that preserves the poison until it is ingested by the target pest.

This not only makes the pesticide more persistent, but also protects it from Rifkin's suits (perhaps belaboring the danger of the stuff getting into skunks and sparrows producing birds as-phyxiating all life on earth with their stench?). The cells are biologically produced, but dead and incapable of multiplying.