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Independent Studies Refute GMO Safety Claims
Yup Farming
Serious concern about Bt-brinjal is justified given that the same marker gene used in Bt-cotton, promoted by the same company, is used in the modified eggplant.
"In an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Janata Party (S) Parliamentary Party leader M.P. Veerendrakumar has expressed concern at the move to introduce Bt brinjal in the country.
"According to the letter, released here on Thursday, genetically modified crops are widely believed to have had adverse impacts on people, livestock and the environment. He quoted scientists in support of his argument that Bt brinjal should not be introduced.
"He said a number of similar genetically modified crops introduced earlier, within and outside of the country, had been reported to have had harmful effects on health and economy....
"'The aad marker gene and the nptll marker gene used in Bt brinjal are antibiotic-resistant,' he said."
The Hindu. (emphasis added)
The former Union Minister said that in his opinion the data put out by the promoters of the new brinjal variety regarding the advantages of Bt seeds were unreliable as "these had been proved to be false with respect to Bt cotton". Mr. Veerendrakumar said "the haste with which Bt brinjal is going to be introduced is of much concern, especially when there is absolutely no crisis in the production of brinjal and there are reliable and successful pest management approaches that could be adopted by India's farmers to grow the crop.''
Quoting scientists, Mr. Veerendrakumar said that "in the light of the opinion expressed by well known experts about the dangers arising from genetically modified crops, the green signal shown by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) for field trials to Mahyo-Monsanto enabling them to commercially launch the world's first Bt brinjal in 2007, becomes a recipe for disaster of immense magnitude".
He said India should learn lessons from the experience of Hawai in launching a commercialised GM fruit — papaya. That virus-resistant papaya variety was introduced in Hawai in 1998, but the GM variety soon turned out to be "more devastating than the virus" as traditional buyers of Hawaiian papayas rejected the new variety.
Mr. Veerendrakumar appealed to the Prime Minister to immediately effect a comprehensive ban on all GM field trials since "GM crops had detrimental effects on agricultural, economic, health and ecological fronts."
An independent study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini released in January 2009 has strengthened their claims, finding that Bt brinjal produces a protein that could induce resistance to the widely-used antibiotic kanamycin. Professor Seralini also noted “numerous significant differences” in feeding trials with non-Bt controls — for instance, in goats fed with Bt brinjal, the time taken to produce the hormone prothrombin was modified, and in rabbits, a reduction in consumption was observed.
Research on the impact of GMOs on health
Although some GMOs have been approved and marketed for several years, there was no body of scientific research on their impact on the biology of living organisms. This is partly because animal feeding trials are not required in the current safety approval process for GMOs in the EU or USA. Only now is a body of evidence starting to emerge from a small number of animal feeding trials into the health effects and progress in the new science of epigenetics. This indicates that genetic engineering is much more unpredictable and risky than traditional breeding.
Recent studies have found a range of serious, unexplained effects from GM consumption:
Additionally, past studies found GM consumption damages the gut wall and is associated with unexplained deaths of test animals:
(It should be noted that these studies were designed to identify health impacts and include toxicological studies involving tissue analysis. These are different to the various non-toxicological feeding studies frequently referred to by the biotechnology industry, which are primarily carried out to test commercial aspects of GM feed).
The study of Epigenetics The actual causes of these effects are not known, but many possible factors could account for them. It has long been known by scientists that the artificial insertion of the genes physically disrupts other genes through the damage caused by the uncontrolled insertion process (‘positional effects’). In addition, the chemical functioning of the new gene interacts with the activity of the plants’ existing genes and biochemical pathways, and so disrupts the metabolism in unpredictable ways. However, research into the new science of “epigenetics” (meaning ‘above genetics’) is also now showing that genes account for only a part of the control of the biochemistry of organisms, and organisms have a level of control above genes that interact with genes. The exact details of this interaction between the rest of the organism and its genes are still far from known. However, this more complete understanding explains why genetic engineering is so unpredictable, with different results produced by each attempt and why the products are often unstable.
Nov. 12, 2008 Greenpeace — A study published today by the Austrian government identified that genetically modified (GMO) crops pose serious threats to reproductive health. In one of the very few long-term feeding studies ever conducted with GMO crops, the fertility of mice fed with a variety of Bt corn, a genetically-modified organism (GMO) was found to be severely impaired, with fewer offspring being produced than by mice fed on natural crops. Considering the severity of the potential threat to human health and reproduction, Greenpeace is demanding a recall of all GMO food and crops from the market, worldwide. The GMO crop used in the study is NK 603 x MON 810, a variety of Bt corn owned by GMO seed company Monsanto. The crop, marketed in the Philippines under the name 'DEKALB Roundup Ready Corn 2' or 'DK818YG(RRC2),' has been approved for food use since 2004 and planting since 2005, despite concerns by sustainable agriculture groups. The corn contains a built-in insect-killer, as well as tolerance to a powerful herbicide, glyphosate, meant to be used with the crop.
The study, sponsored by the Austrian Ministries for Agriculture and Health, was presented on last week at a scientific seminar in Vienna, Austria. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zentek, Professor for Veterinary Medicine at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study, summarized the findings: mice fed with GMO corn had less offspring in the third and fourth generations, and these differences were statistically significant. Mice fed with non-GMO corn reproduced more efficiently. This effect can be attributed to the difference in the food source.
The Austrian scientists performed several long-term feeding trials with laboratory mice over a course of 20 weeks. One of the studies was a so-called reproductive assessment by continuous breeding (RACB) trial, in which the same parent generation gave birth to several litters of baby mice. The parents were fed either with a diet containing 33% of the GMO corn variety, or a closely related non-GMO variety. A decrease in litter size and weight was found to be statistically significant in the third and fourth litters in the
GMO-fed mice compared to the control group.
"This study clearly demonstrates that GMOs have a lot of unknown environmental and health risks and that the safety of GMO crops can not be guaranteed. This is not the first GMO to have been discovered to pose serious health risks, and it will not be the last.
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"GMO food appears to be acting as a birth control agent, potentially leading to infertility--if this is not reason enough to close down the whole biotech industry once and for all, I am not sure what kind of disaster we are waiting for," said Dr. Jan van Aken, GE expert at Greenpeace International. "The reproductive toxicity of this GMO corn was a totally unexpected result, but regulators around the world had considered this GMO corn variety as safe as non-GMO varieties--a potentially devastating error. Playing genetic roulette with our food crops is like playing Russian roulette with consumers and public health."
Author's Bio: Interested in farmers, farming, farms, farmland, farm history, farm skills, farm equipment, etc.
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