Bogus! GM grass linked to Texas cattle deaths

[Guest guest]

This story is so bogus that it really hurts legitimate attempts toquestion GMO crops. 1) Tifton 85 Bermudagrass is not a genetically modified grass. Atleast not any more than breeding a Barred Rock to solid color chickento get Sex Linked chicks is genetic modification. Tifton 85 isproduced by cross breeding several varieties of grasses naturally toproduce a variety that exhibits the desired results. In this case fastgrowing and lots of leaf instead of stem.2) The factor that is being linked to the deaths is prussic acidpoisoning. Prussic acid is a cyanide compound, but it is not some

wideunexpected mutant chemical like the article and the social media postmake it out to be. It is a natural compound that is unfortunatelyfound in a lot of the African grases such as Sudan, Grass, aSorghum.Bermudagrass is also an African grass and one of the parentlines used to develop Tifton 85 did show mild cases of prussic acid,but no poisonings were ever reported. Prussic acid is released whenthe plants are stressed and is seem most often in grass andSudan hybrids.The field where the cattle in the article were poisoned seems to be aperfect storm of bad luck. The grass was greatly stressed by thedroughts, then fertilized over the winter and spring with lots ofnitrogen, then it got a LOT of rain this spring bumping theprotein/nitrogen content way up. Hungry, hot, stressed calves wereturned out after a roping session into the new field and they ate waytoo much and

got poisoned.Tifton 85 and other close varieties have been used for close to 20years in the deep south and Texas for hay and pasture and this is thefirst case of prussic acid poisoning to be found. Ewing