Dow’s “Enlist” GMO Corn Delayed by Opposition

Dow wants to roll out Enlist corn, and then soy­beans and cot­ton to be used in com­bi­na­tion with its new Enlist her­bi­cide that com­bines the weed-killers 2,4-D and glyphosate. The Enlist crops are genet­i­cally altered to tol­er­ate treat­ments of the Enlist her­bi­cide mixture.

The hope is that Enlist will wipe out an explo­sion of crop-choking weeds that have become resis­tant to glyphosate alone.

Opponents have bom­barded Dow and U.S. reg­u­la­tors with an array of con­cerns about Enlist, which is intended to replace Monsanto Co.’s suc­cess­ful Roundup Ready sys­tem. Genetically altered Roundup Ready corn and soy­beans now dom­i­nate the U.S. corn and soy­bean market.

But as Roundup Ready crops have gained pop­u­lar­ity, mil­lions of acres of weeds have devel­oped resis­tance to Roundup her­bi­cide, caus­ing farm­ers to use higher quan­ti­ties of Roundup and other her­bi­cides to try to beat back the weeds.

Critics warn that adding more her­bi­cides to already resis­tant weed pop­u­la­tions will only expand and accel­er­ate weed resis­tance. Some have likened the prob­lem to a “chem­i­cal arms race” across farm country.

“Weed resis­tance to chem­i­cal her­bi­cides is one of the biggest prob­lems farm­ers now face, and that is a direct result of con­vert­ing so much of our farm­land to herbicide-resistant GE (genet­i­cally engi­neered) crops,” said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, senior sci­en­tist at Pesticide Action Network. “We need to get out of this futile chem­i­cal arms race fast.”

Earlier this month, Kansas State University sci­en­tists said they have found evi­dence that some more weed types have devel­oped resis­tance to glyphosate. Researchers said they sprayed two com­mon weed types, Waterhemp and Palmer ama­ranth, with up to four times the typ­i­cal field use for glyphosate and the weeds would not die.

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