In the beginning everything was simple. Bt maize was supposed to be just on the field, and nothing else would be affected: No organism that wasn't on the field, no organisms that would prey on maize pests. But over the years things became more complicated and now it's common knowledge that parts of the Bt plants make it off the field themselves, that predators can be affected indirectly in the food web. And still the question whether the field crop maize could also water organisms seems to be one step too far for most risk assessments.

Rosi-Marshal et al. (2007) just published a long overdue study about whether Bt plant residues got into headwaters during or after cultivation, and whether the Bt-toxin would have adverse effects on water insects like caddies flies, close relatives to butterflies. In both cases the answer was yes. This laboratory study gives enough indication to at least include water insects in the monitoring of Bt crops.

After years of arguments the German government finally decided on changes on a number of regulations for GM crops. What's hailed as an improvement in fact makes matters worse and some of the pressing issues have still not been tackled. What made it to the main TV news was that GM maize now should be planted 150 m away from conventional maize, or 300 m from organic maize. Or less if the GM farmer makes an agreement with his neighbours. It doesn't take much imagination to picture the pressure that can mount in a village if one farmer wants to grow GM maize... But it also means that their neighbours will have to label any kind of GM contamination, even below 0.9% because agreeing to a lesser safety distance clearly could technically been avoided.

In the growing season 2006, Greenpeace sampled leaves from commercially cultivated MON810 in Germany and Spain and found that Bt contents were very variable and often very low, but also that even 10 years into the cultivation of Bt crops, there is no standardised method to determine Bt contents. The results are published in this report.