1.Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed - Reuters
2.Pigs fed GM grain suffer health problems, study says - Chicago Tribune
3.Damning New Study Demonstrates Harm to Animals Raised on GMO Feed - Huffington Post

TAKE ACTION: Should restrictions on GM crops be relaxed? Vote in this Guardian poll
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/jun/12/restrictions-gm-crops-relaxed-genetically-modified

Tell UK supermarkets to use non-GMO feed for their eggs, poultry, pork, beef, and milk
Quickly and easily send an email to the supermarkets asking them to ensure their suppliers secure certified GM-free animal feed
http://gmoaction.org/petition

EXTRACT: “This study raises serious questions about the long-term health impacts of genetically engineered foods. It is grossly negligent that neither the companies nor the government have conducted these rigorous types of studies in the 15 years that GE products have been on the market. Until further long-term, independent studies are done, the public are unwittingly participating in the safety testing of these products.” (item 2)
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1.Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed
Carey Gillam
Reuters, June 11 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/us-gmo-pigs-study-idUSBRE95A14K20130611

*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 no scientific evidence of any detrimental impact.
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2.Pigs fed GM grain suffer health problems, study says
Monica Eng
Chicago Tribune, June 11 2013
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/stew/chi-food-policy-gm-corn-and-soy-feed-cause-health-problems-in-hogs-says-study-20130611,0,2592361.story

Pigs fed a combination of genetically modified soy and corn suffer more frequent severe stomach inflammation and enlargement of the uterus than those who eat a non-GM diet, according to a new peer-reviewed long-term feeding study published Tuesday in the Organic Systems Journal.

The five-month study combined “real on-farm conditions” with “strict scientific controls”, according to lead researcher Judy Carman of Flinders University in Australia.

Using pigs was important not only because “we eat them,” but because humans and pigs share similar digestive systems, Carman said in a statement.

"We need to investigate if people are also getting digestive problems from eating GM crops," the statement said.

In pigs eating genetically modified crops, the average rate of severe stomach inflammation was nearly three times as high as that for other pigs (32 percent vs. 12 percent).  Among male pigs eating a GM diet, the rate of severe stomach inflammation was four times higher.

“The results indicate that it would be prudent for GM crops that are destined for human food and animal feed … to undergo long-term animal feeding studies preferably before commercial planting, particularly for toxicological and reproductive effects,” concluded Carman and her colleagues, who include Iowa-based farmer as well as crop and livestock advisor Howard Vlieger.

Monsanto, the dominant manufacturer of genetically modified seeds, questioned why the study focused on uterine size and stomach inflammation rather than "body weight and feed conversion."  Those factors, it said, are "routinely used as endpoints in health assessments" and have "been measured in hundreds of studies where GM crops have been fed to poultry and livestock with no negative effects."

To that Vlieger responds, "why would you not care what the GM feed does to vital organs and parts of the body?"

Carman added that her findings on weight and feed efficiency largely matched those of Monsanto's. "But we then went further and looked deeper than their superficial studies," she said Tuesday, "and that's when we found significant evidence of harm from eating GM crops."

Monsanto representative Thomas Helscher said that many of the differences in health outcomes were "within normal range" and "considering the ages of the pigs, the author’s speculation about differing uterine weights might be the result of pigs in estrus (heat)."

Carman responds that uterus weights can't "be due to differing rates of estrus...as pigs were thoroughly randomized before they began their diet."

David Edwards, who is the director of animal biotechnology for biotech industry trade organization BIO, questions the methodology and notes that overall stomach inflammation was more common in non-GM fed pigs, even though severe stomach inflammation was more common in the GM-fed group.

And while researchers say they used a combination of GM grains (with traits that resist herbicide and deliver insecticide) to mirror how most hogs are fed, Edwards believes the combination muddies the specific origin of the outcome.

Dr. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, referred to the new study today during testimony before Massachusetts legislators in support of labeling of products with genetically modified ingredients.

"The new peer-reviewed long-term pig feeding study just published raises important concerns about possible health impacts of consuming genetically engineered corn and soy,"  he said in a statement. "There have been very few animal feeding studies of GE food to date, and extremely few that lasted longer than 90 days."

Hansen also said in his testimony that intellectual property issues have prevented independent safety testing of genetically modified crops in the United States. Researchers must get permission from the biotech companies to obtain the seeds they would need for such studies, he said in a statement.

The Center for Food Safety, a sustainable food advocacy group, has long bemoaned that long-term feeding studies are not required before GE foods enter the food supply. Today it called Carman's findings "biologically and statistically significant", mirroring "what many farmers have been reporting anecdotally for years".

“This study raises serious questions about the long-term health impacts of genetically engineered foods,” said Andrew Kimbrell, the center's executive director. “It is grossly negligent that neither the companies nor the government have conducted these rigorous types of studies in the 15 years that GE products have been on the market. Until further long-term, independent studies are done, the public are unwittingly participating in the safety testing of these products.”
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3.Damning New Study Demonstrates Harm to Animals Raised on GMO Feed
Leslie Hatfield
Huffington Post, June 11 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/damning-new-study-demonst_b_3424148.html

Just when you thought the market for controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was completely saturated, a new study published in the Journal of Organic Systems finds that pigs raised on a mixed diet of GM corn and GM soy had higher rates of intestinal problems, “including inflammation of the stomach and small intestine, stomach ulcers, a thinning of intestinal walls and an increase in haemorrhagic bowel disease, where a pig can rapidly ‘bleed-out’ from their bowel and die”. Both male and female pigs reared on the GM diet were more likely to have severe stomach inflammation, at a rate of four times and 2.2 times the control group, respectively. There were also reproductive effects: the uteri of female pigs raised on GM feed were 25 percent larger (in proportion to body size) than those of control sows. (All male pigs were neutered, so scientists were unable to study any effects on the male reproductive systems.)

The study confirms anecdotal evidence from hog farmers who’ve reported reproductive and digestive problems in pigs raised on GM feed. Those who were following this sort of news in 2011 will remember an open letter to the USDA from Dr. M. Huber, a professor at Purdue University, about an unknown organism in Roundup Ready crops causing miscarriages in farm animals.

A common complaint from critics of GM technology -- often painted as “anti-science” by GM proponents -- is that they’ve been inadequately studied. (Don’t think about that for too long -- your first instinct is correct, it doesn’t make sense.) The European Union has long based its regulatory framework (and resultant slow adoption of GMOs) on the precautionary principle. And in fact, according to this study, most of the research on the health impacts of GMOs has either been short term (less than 90 days), performed on non-mammals or failed to examine multiple GM traits concurrently, despite that many new GM crops “stack” traits, and that many diets -- of both animals and humans -- include multiple types of GMOs.

The scientists behind the study report having chosen pigs as their subject for the similarity between their digestive systems and those of humans, and the mixed GM diet for its similarity to the real-life diets of both swine and humans, so this is really damning stuff. They also describe their findings as conservative, noting that even the control group is likely to have been exposed to GMOs in indirect ways they couldn’t avoid, such as trace amounts of GMOs in non-GM feed, and parents fed GM diets.

As one might expect, the scientists conclude their report with a call for more testing, particularly of whether the findings also apply to humans. Scientists at the Consumers Union go one further, saying that concerns raised by the study further underscore the need to label GMOs.

Will the government listen? Time will tell. It’s also  hard to predict the potential impact of this study on the U.S. pork market -- or on the prices of corn and soy. As we saw recently when Japan and South Korea canceled orders for U.S.-produced wheat after the discovery of unapproved GM wheat in Oregon, not all countries take a laissez-faire approach to GMOs. And what about that merger/takeover of Smithfield Foods by Chinese-held Shuanghui, rumored to have been spurred in part by friction over the livestock drug ractopamine? For that matter, will American hog farmers -- seeking rightly to avoid sickening their own hogs -- seek non-GM feed from other countries?

For now, more questions than answers, but if the findings of this study are as serious as they look, American agriculture may be on the verge of paying a very dear price for a long roll in the hay with the biotech industry.