GMO products are safe to eat. This is a widely held assumption; but as Don Lotter showed in a recent paper in the International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture, there has actually been shockingly little research done on the long-term effects of eating GMO foods–and most of what has been was conducted by the industry itself.
The problem is that government funding for independent research on GMOs is scant–and industry funding is non-existent. And it’s extremely difficult for independent researchers to get their hands on GMO seeds without signing restrictive contracts with their patent holders, as the New York Times reported earlier this year.
A study, funded by the Austrian government, that came out last year on the effects of GMO corn on mice. Short story: in the third and fourth generations, mice fed GMOs showed “statistically significant” reproductive dysfunction.
And now comes this study by three French university researchers. It’s a fascinating piece of work. The researchers analyzed data from tests done on rats by Monsanto and another biotech firm, Covance Laboratories, submitted to European government in 2000 and 2001. The firms conducted the tests to prove that their products were safe to eat; scrutinizing the same data, the researchers arrived at a different conclusion.
The three products in question are still quite relevant: one strain of Roundup Ready corn, engineered to withstand Monsanto’s flagship herbicide; and two strands of Bt corn, engineered to contain the insect-killing gene from the BT bacteria. Roundup Ready and Bt products are ubiquitous in the U.S. seed supply, often “stacked” into the same seed.
The researchers also found “clear negative impact” on their livers of rats fed all three kinds of GMO corn.
They added that it’s impossible to tell, based on the data, whether the damage was caused by the specific genes introduced to the corn, or–more troubling still–if the very process of genetic modification creates a toxic effect. And they call for more research
Here’s hoping that governments find the will–and the courage–to find such research; it’s clear that industry won’t.
– from grist.org