Visit almost any anti-GMO
website and you will find alarming
headlines about the alleged dangers of GMO foods. They kill pigs, cows and
sheep on farms and in lab studies! Humans are next!
“Monsanto’s GMO Feed
Creates Horrific Physical Ailments in Animals,” screams a typical article, in
AlterNet, a popular anti-GMO site. It touts “new research” but as is typical of
such articles and such sites, it neither quotes a study nor links to any independent research.
Although there have been
more than 2,000 studies documenting that biotechnology
does not pose an unusual threat to human health and genetically modified foods
are as safe or safer than conventional or organic foods, questions remain in the
minds of many consumers.
What does the research
say?
Animal feeding studies are
the basis for evaluating the safety of GMO crops. One-off studies of lab
animals have occasionally shown some problems. Gilles-Eric Séralini, in his
retracted GM corn study (later republished in a non-peer-reviewed anti-GMO
journal), claimed rats fed genetically engineered corn developed grotesque
cancerous tumors—the kind no farmer would miss among his animals if this
cause-effect was genuinely in place.
Anti-GMO crusader Jeffrey
Smith, on his personal website, the Institute
for Responsible Technology, lists more than a dozen cases in which he
claims animals fed GMOs exhibited abnormal conditions, including cancer and
early death. He also references his own self-published book, and anecdotal
evidence that pigs fed GM feed turned sterile or had false pregnancies and
sheep that grazed on BT cotton plants often died.
“Nearly every independent
animal feeding safety study on GM foods shows adverse or unexplained effects,”
he writes. “But we were not supposed to know about these problems…the biotech
industry works overtime to try to hide them.”
The American Academy of
Environmental Medicine—an alternative medicine group that rejects GMOs and
believes that vaccines are dangerous—claims, “Several animal studies indicate
serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune
problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major
organs and the gastrointestinal system.
Is there any basis to
these allegations? After all, globally, food-producing animals consume 70% to
90% of genetically engineered crop biomass, mostly corn and soybean. In the
United States alone, animal agriculture produces over 9 billion food-producing
animals annually, and more than 95% of these animals consume feed containing GE
ingredients. The numbers are similar in large GMO producing countries with a
large agricultural sector, such as Brazil and Argentina.
Estimates of the numbers
of meals consumed by feed animals since the introduction of GM crops 18 years
ago would number well into the trillions. By common sense alone, if GE feed
were causing unusual problems among livestock, farmers would have noticed. Dead
and sick animals would literally litter farms around the world. Yet there are
no anecdotal reports of such mass health problems.
But we don’t need to
depend on anecdotes to address these concerns. Writing in the Journal of Animal
Science, in the most comprehensive study of GMOs and food ever conducted,
University of California-Davis Department of Animal Science geneticist Alison
Van Eenennaam and research assistant Amy E. Young reviewed 29 years of
livestock productivity and health data from both before and after the
introduction of genetically engineered animal feed. [NOTE: article is behind a
paywall until October 1.]
The field data represented
more than 100 billion animals covering a period before 1996 when animal feed
was 100% non-GMO, and after its introduction when it jumped to 90% and more.
The documentation included the records of animals examined pre and post mortem,
as ill cattle cannot be approved for meat.
What did they find? That
GM feed is safe and nutritionally equivalent to non-GMO feed. There was no
indication of any unusual trends in the health of animals since 1996 when GMO
crops were first harvested. Considering the size of the dataset, it can
reasonably be said that the debate over the impact of GE feed on animal health
is closed: there is zero extraordinary impact.
The Van Eenennaam study
corresponds to other reviews of animal feeding data, some multi-generational
and as long two years.
Several
recent comprehensive reviews from various authors summarize the results of
food-producing animal feeding studies with the current generation of GE crops
(Deb et al., 2013; Flachowsky, 2013; Flachowsky et al., 2012; Tufarelli and
Laudadio, 2013; Van Eenennaam, 2013). Studies have been conducted with a
variety of food-producing animals including sheep, goats, pigs, chickens,
quail, cattle, water buffalo, rabbits and fish fed different GE crop varieties.
The results have consistently revealed that the performance and health of
GE-fed animals were comparable with those fed near isogenic non-GE lines and
commercial varieties.
Here is a comprehensive
list of animal feeding studies. Many of these studies are independent. The list
included systematic reviews, all of which conclude that GMO feed is safe.
As Dr. Steven Novella
notes on his blog Neurologica:
[T]his
data is observational, meaning the authors are looking at data collected out
there in the world and not part of any controlled prospective experiment.
Observational data is always subject to unanticipated confounding factors.
However, robust observational data is still highly useful, and has the
potential to detect any clear signals.
The findings also comport
with long-term GMO feeding laboratory studies. The GENERA database, found at
Biology Fortified online, lists more than three-dozen examples of multi-year
studies. A recent review of 24 of these studies by Snell et. al found:
“Results…do not suggest any health hazards and, in general, there were no
statistically significant differences within parameters observed.” There have
been a few outlier studies, such as the retracted GMO corn research. But if
Séralini’s data were real and 80% of food was poison, animals and people would
be dropping like flies.
The authors also found no
evidence to suggest any health affect on humans who eat those animals. No study
has revealed any differences in the nutritional profile of animal products
derived from GE-fed animals. Because DNA and protein are normal components of
the diet that are digested, there are no detectable or reliably quantifiable
traces of GE components in milk, meat, and eggs following consumption of GE
feed.
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