http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070313/sc_nm/monsanto_greenpeace_dc_1PARIS (Reuters) - Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.

Greenpeace said a study it had commissioned that was published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed rats fed for 90 days on Monsanto's MON863 maize showed "signs of toxicity" in the liver and kidneys.

"It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity," Arnaud Apoteker, a spokesman for Greenpeace France said in a statement.

Campaigners against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) say that genetic modification technology is unproven and potentially dangerous and that GMO crops can contaminate other crops.

The industry says the technology offers vast potential benefits, poses no health risk and has never been shown to contaminate other crops.

"All the experts agree that the maize in question is as safe as traditional maize," Yann Fichet, director external relations for Monsanto France told France's TF1 television.

He said the maize had been authorized in more than 10 countries and in the
European Union but he declined to comment specifically on the allegations raised by Greenpeace.

ON863 is a form of maize genetically modified to make it resistant to corn rootworm. It has been authorized by the European Union for use in animal feed since 2005 and for human consumption since January 2006.DDT is safe. Agent Orange is safe. rBGH is safe. Aspartame is safe. GMOs are safe. How many times does a person have to be lied to by the same company, to realize that that company shouldn't be trusted?

Since Monsanto has bought off the U.S. regulatory agencies, this stuff is being introduced into your food, and the food of the animals you eat, and into the environment (with no way of removing it), with absolutely no testing or safety measures, and in America, without so much as informing the consumer. You will only learn of risks if independent labs, with limited funding, decide to test these bacteria-plant hybrid drugs that are marketed as food.

Oh, and the director of external relations for Monsanto France is wrong, the experts do not agree that the GMO corn is safe. Monsanto's own study showed it was unsafe:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0409/S00046.htmFood Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) approved Monsanto's genetically engineered corn MON863 for human food use in October 2003. The same month, France's Commission du Genie Biomoleculaire (CGB) turned down approval of MON863 after it sighted a Monsanto study showing rats developed a range of abnormalities after being fed the corn.

Do you have access to the data from the study?

Do you have access to the data from the study?If you mean the new study (not Monsanto's original study), according to this (http://www.greenpeace.org/france/news/20070313-ogm-mais-alimentation-toxicite) Greenpeace France page, it should be available "soon" here (http://www.springerlink.com/content/1432-0703). The journal allows you to view the last two months free, and I'm guessing that when volume 52, number 3 is online (next month?), you'll be able to view it for free too.

i'd have to see the study.. although i'm suspicous of studies like this as they've been known to be consuming exceedingly large amounts compared to normal diet. (iirc theirs a few normal vegtables that if one eats too much of too its poisionous)

I'd also be interested in seeing the control groups result

although i'm suspicous of studies like this as they've been known to be consuming exceedingly large amounts compared to normal dietBut you're not suspicious of a company with a long track record of producing toxic substances and lying about them, claiming they're safe? And you have no qualms about eating a bacteria-plant mutant hybrid drug that has undergone none of the safety testing procedures that are required for any other drugs?

Interesting.

Supposedly they also tested some GM potatoes on some lab rats and after about half died, they said it was within acceptable limits and have decided to start the trial on sick people.

Colin Brown
London Independent
Saturday, February 17, 2007

Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.
UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control.

The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: "These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that."

r Simpson said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumours, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Dr Pusztai and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the rats' stomachs, and in parts of their intestines.

The research is likely to spark a fresh row about GM crops in Britain. Graham Thompson, a Greenpeace campaigner, said: "It is important because it backs up the research by Pusztai, which was smeared at the time by the industry."

Brian John of GM Free Cymru, who released the findings, said the research was conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and has been suppressed for eight years.

It showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the rats' organs. Those in the "control groups" that were fed non-GM potatoes suffered ill-effects, but those fed GM potatoes suffered more serious organ and tissue damage.

The potatoes contained an antibiotic resistance marker gene. The institute that carried out the studies refused to release all the information. However, Greenpeace and other consumer groups mounted a protracted legal battle campaign to obtain the report. In May 2004 the Nikulinski District Court in Russia ruled that information relating to the safety of GM food should be open to the public.

The institute, however, refused to release the report. Greenpeace and Russian activist groups again took the institute to court, and won a ruling that the report must be released.

Irina Ermakova, a consultant for Greenpeace, said she had conducted her own animal feeding experiments with GM materials. "The GM potatoes were the most dangerous of the feeds used in the trials ... and on the basis of this evidence they cannot be used in the nourishment of people."

Greenpeace said the Russian trials were also badly flawed. Half of the rats in the trial died, and results were taken from those that survived, in breach of normal scientific practice.

Did they have a control group with ordinary potatoes or corn? How'd the rats fare on those?

I'm certainly not a GMO supporter, but I too would like to see the report before drawing too many conclusions. Like Pan, I'd like to know if there was a control group being fed regular corn. I also wonder if the GMO corn was all that the rats had to eat. A single food diet may be best to isolate medical abnormalities, but it may also cause medical abnormalities.

As an example of the problems associated with a single-food diet, here is a link to a study showing the harmful effects on the brains of rats fed with an all-corn diet.

This study was done in 1971, which I presume is well before GMO corn.

http://web.mit.edu/dick/www/pdf/171.pdf

I'm certainly not a GMO supporter, but I too would like to see the report before drawing too many conclusions. Like Pan, I'd like to know if there was a control group being fed regular corn.Yes, there was. The abstract is online, although the article is not yet free to access since the month's publication hasn't been finalized:Health risk assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) cultivated for food or feed is under debate throughout the world, and very little data have been published on mid- or long-term toxicological studies with mammals. One of these studies performed under the responsibility of Monsanto Company with a transgenic corn MON863 has been subjected to questions from regulatory reviewers in Europe, where it was finally approved in 2005. This necessitated a new assessment of kidney pathological findings, and the results remained controversial. An Appeal Court action in Germany (Münster) allowed public access in June 2005 to all the crude data from this 90-day rat-feeding study. We independently re-analyzed these data. Appropriate statistics were added, such as a multivariate analysis of the growth curves, and for biochemical parameters comparisons between GMO-treated rats and the controls fed with an equivalent normal diet, and separately with six reference diets with different compositions. We observed that after the consumption of MON863, rats showed slight but dose-related significant variations in growth for both sexes, resulting in 3.3% decrease in weight for males and 3.7% increase for females. Chemistry measurements reveal signs of hepatorenal toxicity, marked also by differential sensitivities in males and females. Triglycerides increased by 24–40% in females (either at week 14, dose 11% or at week 5, dose 33%, respectively); urine phosphorus and sodium excretions diminished in males by 31–35% (week 14, dose 33%) for the most important results significantly linked to the treatment in comparison to seven diets tested. Longer experiments are essential in order to indicate the real nature and extent of the possible pathology; with the present data it cannot be concluded that GM corn MON863 is a safe product.It's funny, if it were any other drug, the burden would be on the manufacturer to prove that it's safe, not Greenpeace to prove that it's unsafe.

What makes you so comfortable with GMO plants? Is it because they look and taste like the real (untainted) food? Or are you operating under the (false) presumption that the government is testing these things for safety before releasing them into the environment and your dinner table?

GMO products should be labeled as such.

What is going to happen is that natural stuffs are going to be forced to have labels now, "100% NOT GMO!".

And that's not right.

Consumers want and need to know what they are buying.

GMO products should be labeled as such.

What is going to happen is that natural stuffs are going to be forced to have labels now, "100% NOT GMO!".

And that's not right.

Consumers want and need to know what they are buying.Environmental advocates have been demanding GMO labeling for years, but the GMO manufacturers refuse to do it, because the GMOs are valuable patents that makes them a lot of money. (That's an understatement, it's their main business.)

The GMO manufacturers know that if products are labeled, they will see in America a repeat of what happened in Europe: the consumers suddenly saw how many products contained GMOs, demanded non-GMO products, and GMO products disappeared from the shelves. We're not talking about a small number of foods: most of the processed foods in the supermarket contain GMOs in one form or another.

Fortunately for Monsanto, one of their key employees was in charge of the government project that set out the regulations for GMOs in the United States. So not only do they require no safety testing, but they need not be labeled either. And they basically own the FDA, so unless there's a massive consumer outcry, nothing will change.

In the meantime, the only recourse for the educated consumer is to buy products that are certified organic, or products that don't contain any GMO crops or their derivatives. Some manufacturers will also put a "NON-GMO" label on their products, but since there is no uniform regulation of such labels, you're putting your trust in that particular manufacturer that the label is accurate.

I'm certainly not a GMO supporter, but I too would like to see the report before drawing too many conclusions. Like Pan, I'd like to know if there was a control group being fed regular corn. I also wonder if the GMO corn was all that the rats had to eat. A single food diet may be best to isolate medical abnormalities, but it may also cause medical abnormalities.
I'm reminded of the Italian Aspartame study where rats were given aspartame or not. They were a type of rat bred to develop lots of cancers, anyway... sure enough the Aspartame rats had more cancer. But what the news reports didn't tell you, and was rather buried in the data, was that they lived longer than the control group. :p

I'm But what the news reports didn't tell you, and was rather buried in the data, was that they lived longer than the control group. :pIf you're referring to this (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16507461) study that I cited some time ago on this forum, I don't see any mention of a statistically significant difference in life span. Looking at the charts of survival rate, they seem nearly identical.

Besides, aspartame must be safe. Monsanto said it was! (Note: sarcasm.)

Unlike the study in this thread, the following aren't published, peer-reviewed, and conclusive, but they are worrisome:

http://www.gmfreecymru.org/news/Press_Notice16Feb2007.htm<b>SECRET MONSANTO GM POTATO STUDY SUPPRESSED FOR 8 YEARS</b>

GM Potatoes are "unfit for human consumption"

A secret feeding study of Monsanto GM potatoes, conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and suppressed for 8 years, showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the organs of the rats in the study (1) (2). In comparison the rats in the "control groups" which were fed on normal potatoes or on a non-potato diet were healthier, and had much less organ and tissue damage. This research, fully supported by Monsanto through the provision of the GM potatoes, was conducted at approximately the same time as Arpad Pusztai's research in the Rowett Institute.

For some reason (probably to assist in the consent process) Monsanto co-operated in some feeding studies involving rats from the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Something "inconvenient" showed up in these feeding studies, but the Institute refused to release all the information into the public domain and in 1999 the researchers presented a "doctored" version of their Report in support of Monsanto's application for Russian commercialization. The consent was duly given in 2000 by the Russian regulators on the basis of this corrupt piece of science.

However, Greenpeace and other consumer groups mounted a protracted and immensely frustrating campaign to obtain a sight of the feeding study Report. In May 2004 the Nikulinski District Court in Russia ruled that information relating to the safety of GM food should be open to the public. On the basis of this ruling Greenpeace tried to obtain the GM potato report; but the Institute and Monsanto refused to release it. So Greenpeace and local activist groups again took the Institute to court, and in October 2005 won a ruling that the Report must be released. At last it was handed over, and examined by Dr Irina Ermakova at the request of Greenpeace. She produced a brief Russian paper on her findings, and we have now produced an English-language version with the kind agreement of Greenpeace (5).

Dr Irina Ermakova, the Greenpeace consultant, has herself conducted animal feeding experiments with GM materials. In her very restrained commentary on the Russian study (1) she criticized the small scale of the experiment and its design, and was especially critical of the complacent conclusions drawn by the authors from evidence which was actually profoundly worrying. The GM potato was nutritionally inferior to its conventional counterpart and to other Russian potato varieties. The research results showed that both "normal" Russet Burbank potatoes and the GM variety caused "serious morphological changes in the internal organs" of the animals in the trials. They also showed that the group of animals fed on the GM potatoes suffered greater weight loss than the other animals, and statistically significantly greater damage to kidneys, liver and large gut. There was also greater damage to blood serum, testes and prostate. Dr Ermakova concluded: "The GM potatoes were the most dangerous of the feeds used in the trials........ and on the basis of this evidence they CANNOT be used in the nourishment of people."Link to Dr. Ermakova's comments in full: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~brianj/gm1.html.

She also performed a preliminary study on GMO soy:

http://www.gmfreecymru.org/pivotal_papers/ermakova.htm<b>Mother Rats Fed Genetically Modified Soy Led to 56% Mortality of Offspring</b>

edical Association Urges NIH to Follow-up Preliminary Evidence

October 31, 2005—Tucson, AZ. At the conference of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) held from October 27-30, the results of a Russian rat study were presented in which an astounding 55.6% of the offspring of female rats fed genetically engineered soy flour died within three weeks. The female rats had received 5-7 grams of the Roundup Ready variety of soybeans, beginning two weeks before conception and continuing through nursing. By comparison, only 9% of the offspring of rats fed non-GM soy died. Furthermore, offspring from the GM-fed group were significantly stunted—36% weighed less than 20 grams after 2 weeks, compared to only 6.7% from the non-GM soy control group.

The study was conducted by Dr. Irina Ermakova, a leading scientist at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). It was originally presented on October 10, 2005 to the symposium on genetic modification in Russia, organized by the National Association for Genetic Security (NAGS). It was presented at the AAEM conference by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, the world’s bestselling book on GM food safety.

Smith says, “The Russian study is preliminary and not conclusive. But given the disturbing and dramatic results, it begs immediate independent follow-up.”

Yes, there was. The abstract is online, although the article is not yet free to access since the month's publication hasn't been finalized:It's funny, if it were any other drug, the burden would be on the manufacturer to prove that it's safe, not Greenpeace to prove that it's unsafe.

What makes you so comfortable with GMO plants? Is it because they look and taste like the real (untainted) food? Or are you operating under the (false) presumption that the government is testing these things for safety before releasing them into the environment and your dinner table?

The world is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

As global warming increases...there has been a steady decline in the world's ability to produce grain. Once areable lands have been desertified (I think I invented that word), and the crops raised on still areable lands have produced less every year.

There are still areas on this planet where people do not have enough to eat that are reliant on imported grain...GM Corn may well end up having long term effects. It may not. What is certain is that starvation is much more immediate and certain in its mortality.

I do agree, however, that GM products should be labelled as such, so people can make an informed choice.

Once areable lands have been desertified (I think I invented that word)
It's a real word.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/restore/library/glossary.htm#d
:P

There are still areas on this planet where people do not have enough to eat that are reliant on imported grain...GM Corn may well end up having long term effects. It may not. What is certain is that starvation is much more immediate and certain in its mortality.Except that GM corn doesn't produce better yields than non-GM corn.

It's an myth that genetic engineering produces higher yields. On average, it doesn't. It just lines the pockets of the owner of the patent of that crop. Understand that patent law, and the right to patent life which the Supreme Court so stupidly granted, is driving this entire industry.

GMOs are a tough sell on the public, because they offer the consumer zero benefits. They're not cheaper (yields aren't higher), they're not more nutritious, they don't use less chemicals to produce, and they don't taste better. That's why the GMO industry has chosen the only viable path, to keep the public in complete ignorance over the very existence of GMOs, so they won't even know to complain.

That makes little sense.

Towards what purpose would they bother with GMOs if they had no benefit and almost certainly incur a higher cost to produce?

Towards what purpose would they bother with GMOs if they had no benefit and almost certainly incur a higher cost to produce?Patents, and money. Those are the factors driving this entire industry.

All those GMO crop are protected by patents. Meaning, the company gets to control exactly how they're licensed, and they can sue anyone who grows the crop without permission (even if it's accidentally blown over to a neighboring farm, as in the infamous Canadian decision of Monsanto v. Schmeiser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser)).

ost genetic engineering is also simply designed to make the plant resistant to a specific herbicide, and nothing more (e.g., Monsanto makes the chemical RoundUp, and engineerings "RoundUp Ready" seeds). That means that, on top of licensing rights, the GMO manufacturer can force farmers to buy their proprietary chemical herbicide along with their proprietary seed.

This is not about benefiting humanity or feeding the hungry, it's about abusing intellectual property to line the pockets of big business, at the expense of the environment and the consumer. If the Supreme Court overturned its 1980 decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which started this mess by approving the patenting of life, this industry would disappear.

It certainly looks as if the GM companies have a supply but don't have a natural demand for their products. It also seems as if they invested heavily to grab patents quickly and now can't afford the lead time fully testing the products before they come to market.

It certainly looks as if the GM companies have a supply but don't have a natural demand for their products.This is why the GMO manufacturers have bought up the seed companies. They can corner the market on seed on the one hand, and force farmers to abandon their own seed on the other (through contamination, and the consequent threat of litigation).

Farmers also like the convenience of being able to spray tons of herbicide that will not harm the actual crop, and buy into the GMO company claims about higher yields.

In the end, though, farmers do not make more money with GMO crops, and consumers of course get no benefits. The only party that benefits from the deal is the GMO manufacturer.

Complicating the whole mess in the United States is the massive government subsidy of agriculture, which means farmers can lose money and still stay in business. What this really means, though, is that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the GMO manufacturers, as the money passes from the farmers to the companies.It also seems as if they invested heavily to grab patents quickly and now can't afford the lead time fully testing the products before they come to market.Oh, they can afford to test the products, they simply have no incentive to test them to any serious extent. Why should they?

Oh, and if you want a summary of the studies on the yield rates and such, read this (http://www.biotech-info.net/ten_reasons_clark.pdf). It talks about other reasons not to plant GMOs, such as pests developing resistance far more readily, and reports of livestock refusing to eat it (I guess they're fussier about their food sources than we are).