Australian GMO feed study found wanting

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Critics were quick to dissect an Australian study that purported to find that feeding GM corn to pigs caused stomach problems.

In a blog published in Ontario, University of Guelph professor Robert Friendship describes the diagnosis of stomach inflammation as "incorrect." The researchers did only a visual appraisal of the stomach linings and "misinterpreted redness to indicate evidence of inflammation. It did not." The researchers did not include an animal pathologist.

Mark Lynas, the former anti-GMO activist, was even more to the point. "This is propaganda dressed up as science, which is why it didn't make a proper peer-reviewed journal." The Journal of Organic Systems, where the study appeared, Lynas writes, publishes once or twice a year and only with research touting the benefits of organic agriculture.

Lynas doubts reporters covering the study's release actually read it. If they had, they would have noticed that the study shows 15 per cent of non-GMO-fed pigs had heart abnormalities while only six per cent of GMO-fed pigs did so. Also, non-GMO-fed pigs were twice as likely to have liver problems.

Lynas notes that the study shows nearly 60 per cent of all the pigs in the study were suffering from pneumonia at the time of slaughter. "No conclusions can be drawn from this study, except for one – that there should be tighter controls on experiments performed on animals by anti-biotech campaigners, for the sake of animal welfare." BF