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The Curious Case of the Poisoned Cows [View all]
Wired Magazine - Science Blog 6/29/12
The Curious Case of the Poisoned Cows
On a bright morning in early June, a Texas rancher named Jerry Abel turned his small herd of cattle out to graze. The 18 cows moved hungrily into that field of fresh grass. Within a few hours, only three were still alive.
Abel’s 80 acre ranch sits just a little east of Austin and the story was strange enough that on Sunday a local CBS affiliate picked it up. “There was nothing you could do,” Abel told KEYE about his desperate efforts to save the animals. “Obviously, they were dying.”
The television reporter apparently saw the evil hand of science at work in the episode, at least that was definitely the message in the story: “Genetically modified grass linked to cattle deaths.“ Alternatively, she just didn’t do her homework because the grass in question – Tifton 85 - is not a GM product. It’s a decades old hybrid grass developed by Georgia agricultural scientists as a high-protein, easily digestible forage.
The CBS story was immediately circulated – and by circulated, I mean embraced – by anti-GM activists and bloggers. I wrote a summary of this for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker earlier this week which detailed both the activist enthusiasm for the story (one suggested that GM grass was practically producing chemical warfare agents) and the rapid corrective response from science writers who knew what “hybrid” actually meant. The you-got-this-wrong message was so strong that CBS News corrected the story within a day.
The Curious Case of the Poisoned Cows
On a bright morning in early June, a Texas rancher named Jerry Abel turned his small herd of cattle out to graze. The 18 cows moved hungrily into that field of fresh grass. Within a few hours, only three were still alive.
Abel’s 80 acre ranch sits just a little east of Austin and the story was strange enough that on Sunday a local CBS affiliate picked it up. “There was nothing you could do,” Abel told KEYE about his desperate efforts to save the animals. “Obviously, they were dying.”
The television reporter apparently saw the evil hand of science at work in the episode, at least that was definitely the message in the story: “Genetically modified grass linked to cattle deaths.“ Alternatively, she just didn’t do her homework because the grass in question – Tifton 85 - is not a GM product. It’s a decades old hybrid grass developed by Georgia agricultural scientists as a high-protein, easily digestible forage.
The CBS story was immediately circulated – and by circulated, I mean embraced – by anti-GM activists and bloggers. I wrote a summary of this for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker earlier this week which detailed both the activist enthusiasm for the story (one suggested that GM grass was practically producing chemical warfare agents) and the rapid corrective response from science writers who knew what “hybrid” actually meant. The you-got-this-wrong message was so strong that CBS News corrected the story within a day.
Heat and drought stress are very, very bad for plants.
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