Bird Flu - Monoculture - The Diigo Meta page

• 06 Jun 07
  

  James Linzel
  • We can learn from past mistakes. In the early 1970s, for example, the U.S. corn industry developed “Tcms” corn, a highly profitable strain adapted for large-scale farming. Only after 85% of the nation’s seed corn acreage was covered with the new variety did the industry realize that the strain also happened to be particularly susceptible to a rare form of leaf blight fungus that then wiped out areas of the U.S. corn belt.1932
  • Biodiversity is biosecurity. Even the most virulent of diseases typically do not kill all infected individuals, in part due to natural inborn genetic variability. In the wild, natural selection takes advantage of this variation to pass disease-resistant qualities to the next generation.1937 The diversity in nature tends to ensure that some individuals will survive whatever comes along. Artificial selection for production qualities undermines Mother Nature in two ways, by inbreeding unnaturally elevated egg production and fleshiness over fitness, as well as by reducing the genetic diversity that can act as resistance insurance against present and unforeseen threats of disease.1938

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