A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet

Judy A. Carman1,2*, Howard R. Vlieger3, Larry J. Ver Steeg4, Verlyn E.
Sneller3, Garth W. Robinson5**, Catherine A. Clinch-Jones1, Julie I.
Haynes6, John W. Edwards2

1 Institute of Health and Environmental Research, Kensington Park, SA, Australia.
2 Health and the Environment, School of the Environment, Flinders University, Bedford
Park, SA, Australia.
3 Verity Farms, Maurice, Iowa, USA.
4 Ana-Tech, Monroe, Wisconsin, USA.
5 Sioux Center Veterinary Clinic, Sioux Center, Iowa, USA.
6 School of Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
* Email: judycarman@ozemail.com.au, judy.carman@flinders.edu.au.
** Present: Robinson Veterinary Services PC, Sioux Centre, Iowa, USA.

http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf (원문 : 첨부파일)
http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/index.html


Abstract
A significant number of genetically modified (GM) crops have been approved to enter
human food and animal feed since 1996, including crops containing several GM genes
‘stacked’ into the one plant. We randomised and fed isowean pigs (N=168) either a mixed
GM soy and GM corn (maize) diet (N=84) or an equivalent non-GM diet (N=84) in a longterm
toxicology study of 22.7 weeks (the normal lifespan of a commercial pig from
weaning to slaughter). Equal numbers of male and female pigs were present in each
group. The GM corn contained double and triple-stacked varieties. Feed intake, weight
gain, mortality and blood biochemistry were measured. Organ weights and pathology
were determined post-mortem. There were no differences between pigs fed the GM and
non-GM diets for feed intake, weight gain, mortality, and routine blood biochemistry
measurements. The GM diet was associated with gastric and uterine differences in pigs.
GM-fed pigs had uteri that were 25% heavier than non-GM fed pigs (p=0.025). GM-fed
pigs had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation with a rate of 32% of GM-fed pigs
compared to 12% of non-GM-fed pigs (p=0.004). The severe stomach inflammation was
worse in GM-fed males compared to non-GM fed males by a factor of 4.0 (p=0.041), and
GM-fed females compared to non-GM fed females by a factor of 2.2 (p=0.034).
Key words: GMO, GM corn, GM soy, GM animal feed, toxicology, stomach inflammation,
uterus weight.

====================

관련 기사

Study links genetically modified grain to stomach inflammation in pigs

By Carey Gillam

로이터 June 11 | Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:42pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/gmo-pigs-study-idUSL2N0EN0UR20130611?feedType=RSS&virtualBrandChannel=11563

 (Reuters) – Pigs fed a diet of only genetically modified grain showed markedly higher stomach inflammation than pigs who dined on conventional feed, according to a new study by a team of Australian scientists and U.S. researchers.

The study adds to an intensifying public debate over the impact of genetically modified crops, which are widely used by U.S. and Latin American farmers and in many other countries around the world.

The study was published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Organic Systems by researchers from Australia who worked with two veterinarians and a farmer in Iowa to study the U.S. pigs.

Lead researcher Judy Carman is an epidemiologist and biochemist and director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Adelaide, Australia.

The study was conducted over 22.7 weeks using 168 newly weaned pigs in a commercial U.S. piggery.

One group of 84 ate a diet that incorporated genetically modified (GM) soy and corn, and the other group of 84 pigs ate an equivalent non-GM diet. The corn and soy feed was obtained from commercial suppliers, the study said, and the pigs were reared under identical housing and feeding conditions. The pigs were then slaughtered roughly five months later and autopsied by veterinarians who were not informed which pigs were fed on the GM diet and which were from the control group.

Researchers said there were no differences seen between pigs fed the GM and non-GM diets for feed intake, weight gain, mortality, and routine blood biochemistry measurements.

But those pigs that ate the GM diet had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation – 32 percent of GM-fed pigs compared to 12 percent of non-GM-fed pigs. The inflammation was worse in GM-fed males compared to non-GM fed males by a factor of 4.0, and GM-fed females compared to non-GM-fed females by a factor of 2.2. As well, GM-fed pigs had uteri that were 25 percent heavier than non-GM fed pigs, the study said.

The researchers said more long-term animal feeding studies need to be done.

Biotech seeds are genetically altered to grow into plants that tolerate treatments of herbicide and resist pests, making producing crops easier for farmers. Some critics have argued for years that the DNA changes made to the transgenic plants engineer novel proteins that can be causing the digestive problems in animals and possibly in humans.

The companies that develop these transgenic crops, using DNA from other bacteria and other species, assert they are more than proven safe over their use since 1996.

CropLife International, a global federation representing the plant science industry, said more than 150 scientific studies have been done on animals fed biotech crops and to date, there is not scientific evidence of any detrimental impact.

Warning: Food can seriously damage your health
Maarten Rabaey
De Morgen, 16 February 2013 (Original in Dutch) 
Translated into English by New Europe Translations
http://gmoseralini.org/warning-food-can-seriously-damage-your-health/

*The horsemeat scandal is just the tip of the iceberg, as consumers don’t know what’s in their food, regardless of packaging fraud.

*More and more food contains residues of carcinogenic herbicides.

*The industry has a strong hold on Europe’s food safety agency, holding back independent standards and inspections.

Two years ago, Danish farmer Ib Borup Pedersen thought an epidemic had broken out among his 450 pigs. Suddenly, his animals were suffering from chronic diarrhoea, eating less, or developing stomach ulcers, while some of his piglets were born with disabilities and his boars displayed fertility problems. Something always seemed to be the matter. Not just with the pigs, but with the profits of his farming company as well. Due to the increasing number of unhealthy animals, his sales plummeted, while the expenses for vets and drugs kept rising. Until he asked himself the crucial question: what if it was the feed?

Pedersen followed his farmer’s intuition and exchanged the new feed for his old recipe. And what do you know – the health problems disappeared within two days. What was the difference? The feed that sickened the animals consisted of imported genetically modified (GMO) soy, whereas the old recipe consisted of soy without GMOs and fishmeal. Other farmers have since confirmed the findings, published by Pedersen on 13 April last year, in the Danish farming magazine Effektivt Landbrug.

Independent scientists were not surprised. They have increasingly warned against the GMO that Pedersen was using as feed, Roundup Ready (RR) soy, a crop genetically engineered to be resistant to Roundup. This is a weedkiller containing glyphosate, a toxin that kills all other plants without harming the crop.  Both the glyphosate-resistant crop and the herbicide were developed by agricultural corporation Monsanto, which uses both products for its production of large scale GMO-monocultures in North and South America.
 

Birth defects

Other corporations produce similar glyphosate herbicides, ignoring the distressed cry of several Argentine farmers who sued Monsanto after witnessing an increase of cancer and birth defects among their children, as a result of using glyphosate herbicides. An Argentine professor has previously shown that glyphosate produces birth defects in the embryos of frogs and chickens.

The experience of the Danish farmer raises the question of how harmful the glyphosate residues are that end up in our food – in pigs, cattle or horses through animal feed, in human bodies through our consumption of meat and milk. Or even directly, because GMO soy proteins are used as an emulsifier in numerous food preparations.

Aziz Aris and Samuel Leblanc from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, demonstrated the transmission of the toxin via GMO crops to the human body in February 2011. In a study published in the Elsevier journal Reproductive Toxicology, they revealed the presence of toxic Roundup components, such as glyphosate, in the bloodstream of pregnant women and fetuses. “Considering the toxicity of these pollutants and the vulnerability of fetuses, further studies are needed,” they wrote. The same warning resounded elsewhere. In Berlin, between 0.5 and 2 nanograms of glyphosate per milliliter of urine were observed among townspeople who had never had any direct contact with the toxin.

Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team from the University of Caen, France, conducted similar experiments on rats. Their conclusions, published in August of last year, in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, were shocking: compared to a control group fed on a normal diet, rats on a diet containing 11 percent of RR corn, died two to three times as often and faster. Females were quicker to develop breast tumors; their hormone balance was upset. In males, the scientists observed 5.5 times more cases of vascular congestion and destruction of liver cells. But, more importantly, they developed four times as many tumors, up to 600 days earlier than the control group.

After this study, the European Parliament quite logically asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for a critical analysis of all imported RR-GMO feed, and its consequences for the public health. However, the EFSA did not act. On the contrary, it attempted to discredit the statistical reliability of Séralini’s study. In the EFSA, glyphosate standards are          still determined by a scientific committee, the PPR or pesticides panel. Although its advice is not binding, the Commission tends to follow it without reflection. “The reason why the PPR panel’s judgments are so favourable towards the industry, is because members of the panel have ties to that industry,” says Nina Holland of Corporate Europe Observatory, an NGO that insists on greater transparency. “After a critical report by the Court of Auditors last year regarding conflicts of interest, their rules have become stricter, but the industry’s influence is still too big. The problem is that the agency employs few people on a permanent basis and that its panels need to rely on ‘volunteers’. The industry takes advantage of this fact by sending academics whom they support financially.”

A telling example is the vice-president of the PPR panel, the Dutchman Theodorus Brock. He conducts research for the Alterra institute, operating under the aegis of Wageningen University. During the last five years, he has also worked as a consultant for Monsanto. His panel was among those to brush aside Séralini’s study and the Argentinean research on deformities as unreliable. “And that’s how it always goes,” sighs the Briton Claire Robinson, research director of Earth Open Source, an NGO advocating a sustainable food chain. “The problem is that the EFSA panels only take those studies seriously that are published by the industry or by universities funded by the industry. All research should be considered, and people need to accept the updating of knowledge.”

The industry’s wishes

Last year, in collaboration with academics from the School of Medicine of London’s King College, Robinson published a peer-reviewed paper in a journal called Environmental & Analytical Toxicology, which criticizes the admission of glyphosate and glyphosate-resistant crops. Robinson said: “The current EU-license for glyphosate dates from 2002 and is based on the Germans license of that time. It should normally have been re-evaluated last year. The European Parliament demanded tougher standards, but the Commission simply prolonged the current standards for another three years. There are, however, reasonable grounds to question the first admission that we analysed. There were certain birth defects, for instance, among the rats and rabbits that were tested, but these were presented inoffensively as ‘development variations’. On the other hand, we now have studies not only indicating the harmful effects of glyphosate but of other Roundup components as well. AMPA, for instance, the compound that is supposed to break down glyphosate in a natural environment, is harmful to human DNA. There are also indications that the commonly used side product, POEA, which facilitates the penetration of glyphosate in GMO crops, also increases its penetration in human cells.”

Robinson’s team also doubts the ‘acceptable daily intake’ (ADI) for glyphosate. The Commission pegged it at 0.3 mg/kg, whereas initial animal testing would advise a minimum of 20 mg/kg.

[Correction from Claire Robinson: The 20 mg/kg figure is not correct. Our paper concluded that based on the initial industry studies, the ADI should be 0.1 mg/ kg bw/d (bodyweight per day), one-third of the ADI suggested by the German authorities and subsequently adopted by the EU Commission. The ADI based on independent studies should be even lower: 0.025 mg/kg bw/d, twelve times lower than the ADI accepted by the Commission and currently in force.]

Robinson said: “This also goes to show that the EFSA simply adapts the standards to the industry’s wishes. Lentils are a striking example. The residual standard for glyphosate was increased at Monsanto’s request” (from 0.1 mg/kg to 15mg/kg). The same more or less happened with the standards for animal fodder imported from Argentina.

The doses are increased because weeds are becoming more resistant to glyphosate herbicides. Herman van Bekkem, GMO campaign manager for Greenpeace, said: “That is because the industry either increased the concentration of its product or farmers started spraying more, with higher levels of residues ending up in the food chain.” Van Bekkem is worried because this year the EU is considering 19 GMO crops for cultivation in Europe.

“Thirteen of those are glyphosate-resistant. Once the farmers start cultivating these crops, there’s almost no way back. They’ll be trapped in a monopoly of package deals: GMO-seeds and weed killer are one and the same package. As consumers, we’d be far more exposed to glyphosate than we are now. If these crops are allowed, the use of glyphosate will increase by 800 percent.”

EU-US free trade deal will dismantle public health protections on GM

Monday, 18 February 2013 20:16

http://gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14649:eu-us-free-trade-deal-will-dismantle-public-health-protections-on-gm

유전자조작 식품이 필요 없는 10가지 이유

출처 : 유전자조작 감시(GM Watch)

1. 유전자조작 식품은 식량위기를 해결할 수 없다.
2. 유전자조작 작물은 생산량을 증대시킬 가능성이 없다.
3. 유전자조작 작물은 농약 사용을 증가시킨다.
4. 세상을 먹여살릴 더 좋은 방법들이 있다.
5. 유전자조작 보다 더 성공적인 다른 경작기술(재배기술)이 있다.
6. 유전자조작 기술은 먹을거리로 안전하다는 점을 증명하지 못했다.
7. 소비자의 동의 없이 가축 사료에 유전자조작 작물을 몰래 투여했다.
8. 어느 누구도 유전자조작 식품이 건강에 어떤 영향을 끼치는지 모니터링하지 않았다.
9.  유전자조작과 비유전자조작은 공존할 수 없다.
10. 우리는 결코 유전자조작 기업을 신뢰할 수 없다.

===================

10 reasons why we don’t need GM foods

출처 : 유전자조작 감시(GM Watch)
http://www.gmwatch.org/10-reasons-why-we-dont-need-gm-foods

일명 ‘독약의 군주’로 불리는 세계 최대의 유전자조작(GMO) 기업인 몬산토가 중소 업체들과 배타적 계약을 맺는 방식으로 타사 제품의 진입을 가로막는 독점 체제를 구축해온 것으로 드러났다는 AP 통신의 2009년 12월 14일자 보도입니다. (원문 및 연합뉴스의 보도는 아래 참조)

=============

“몬산토, 배타적 계약으로 GMO 독점”

출처 : 연합뉴스 2009년 12월 14일

아침에 먹은 시리얼과 점심에 마신 음료수, 저녁 식탁에 오른 소고기 스튜가 모두 한 회사에서 제조한 유전자 변형 곡물로 만든 것이라면 이는 사실상 독점 시장에 해당할까.

AP통신은 세계 최대 유전자 변형 식품(GMO) 업체인 몬산토가 중소 업체들과 배타적 계약을 맺는 방식으로 타사 제품의 진입을 가로막는 독점 체제를 구축해온 것으로 드러났다고 14일 보도했다.

AP통신은 몬산토의 라이선스 계약서와 업계 관계자, 법률 전문가 인터뷰를 분석한 결과 몬산토는 200개 중소 기업과 계약을 맺고 자사 옥수수와 콩 유전자를 쓸 수 있는 권한을 주는 방식으로 영향력을 확대해 왔다.

실제로 미국에서 쓰이는 곡물 가운데 80%에 몬산토 특허 유전자가 들어갔으며, 콩 중에 몬산토 유전자가 주입된 비율은 95%로 치솟는 것으로 나타났다.

몬산토는 중소 기업에 자사 유전자 사용을 허가하는 대신 경쟁 업체의 유전자는 쓰지 못하도록 계약서에 못막았다.

이에 따라 중소 기업들은 사전에 몬산토의 문서 허가를 받지 않는 한 이미 몬산토 유전자를 주입한 곡물에는 타사 유전자를 쓰지 못하도록 금지돼 왔다.

미 법무부와 아이오와, 텍사스 주 검찰은 몬산토의 경영 전략과 라이선스 계약이 미국의 반독점법을 어겼는지에 대해 조사에 착수했다.

몬산토 관계자는 “우리의 라이선스 계약이나 계약 문구를 둘러싼 주장에 어떤 이점도 있다고 보지 않는다”면서 “많은 기업들과 맺은 라이선스 계약은 경쟁 친화적이며, 경쟁사를 포함해 수백개 종자 기업으로 하여금 농부들에게 새로운 품종 수천가지를 공급하도록 했다”고 주장했다.

몬산토는 그러나 경쟁을 피해감으로써 종자 가격을 마음대로 올리거나 동물 사료와 밀가루 빵, 과자 값도 인상할 수 있었을 것으로 보인다.

몬산토는 시장 지배력을 확대하는 데도 라이선스 계약을 활용한 것으로 드러났다.

몬산토는 스위스 농업 회사인 신젠타와 맺은 계약에서 전체 곡물 종자 중 70%를 몬산토 제품으로 채우면 할인 혜택을 주기로 한 것.

몬산토는 특히 종자 업체들이 조항에 대해 논의를 꺼내지 못하도록 못박았으며, 비밀 유지 조항을 위반하면 계약을 취소하겠다고 적시한 것으로 확인됐다.

미주리 주(州) 세이트루이스에 있는 몬산토는 1996년 세계 처음으로 상업용 유전자 조작 콩을 내놓는 등 기술 혁명에 성공한 데다 변호사를 앞세워 특허권을 휘두른 끝에 단숨에 업계 1위로 뛰어올랐다.

아이오와 주립 대학의 농업 경제학자인 닐 할은 씨앗 유전자 시장에서 몬산토의 영향력이 90%에 달하며, 이는 결국 몬산토에 장기적으로 가격을 인상할 여지를 준다고 지적했다.

====================

Monsanto seed business role revealed

Source: The Associated Press , December 14, 2009