In the Bangor Daily News’ discussion of genetically engineered food, no one has mentioned the Iowa pig farmers. According to an article in the Iowa Farm Bureau Spokesman, the birth rates of sows belonging to veteran farmer Jerry Rosman dropped almost 80 percent last year. After checking all usual possible causes, Rosman began to hear that other farmers in the area also had declining farrowing rates.

Rosman finally concluded that the one variable these farms had in common was that they all fed their sows genetically engineered Bt corn. One producer switched back to non-Bt corn and his sows returned to normal farrowing.

In laboratory testing, it emerged that the common denominator in all the suspect Bt corn was very high levels of a particular strain of fusarium wilt, a fungus that attacks corn and other plants. After the article was published, Rosman was deluged with phone calls from other farmers experiencing the same problem. A subsequent editorial in the Spokesman claimed that the presence of fusarium was coincidental. The writer claimed that one study showed that Bt corn had less fusarium because Bt corn was attacked and stressed less by insects than natural corn. But no one bothered to tell the pigs, the Bt corn or the fusarium wilt about that study, and the farrowing rates still crashed.

Is this a new strain of fusarium that makes pigs infertile? Does this strain of fusarium cause infertility when pigs eat it in natural corn, or only when they eat it in Bt corn? If the Bt corn or fusarium causes infertility in pigs, does it also cause infertility in people?

Maybe genetically engineered Bt corn is screwing up fertility in pigs, maybe not. Maybe genetically engineered Bt corn is screwing up fertility in people, maybe not. Until we know more, shouldn’t we be labeling genetically engineered food?

Jane McCloskey

Deer Isle