Prompted by environmental groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is forcing farmers who plan on growing GE corn next spring to plant up to 50 percent of their crop with conventional seed. The EPA bases its unprecedented action on a controversial Cornell University laboratory study that found pollen from GE corn could kill Monarch butterfly caterpillars, despite the fact the author of the study maintains that the conditions created in the laboratory are extremely unlikely to be duplicated in nature.