US federal prosecutors have charged whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in a criminal complaint, and asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a move to extradite him. The new pig study was the first attempt to seriously and independently test over the typical life of the pigs the effects, if any, of the most widely used mix of GMO feed. The study, peer-reviewed and just released, was done by a scientific group led by Dr Judy Carman of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Australia. For years farmers in Europe, North America and elsewhere have noted that their livestock fed on a diet of GMO feed suffered serious digestive and reproductive problems. A group of Midwest USA farmers organized an independent scientific study of feeding trials with groups of pigs fed GMO feed mixes and pigs fed non-GMO mixes of corn and soya. The digestive tract of a pig is very similar to that of humans. Carman and associates explain their methodology: “At a commercial piggery in the US, we took 168 just-weaned pigs and fed them a typical diet for the piggery, containing soy and corn, for 22.7 weeks (over 5 months) until the pigs were slaughtered at their usual slaughter age. Half of the pigs were fed widely-used varieties of GM soy and GM corn (the GM-fed group) for this whole period, and the other half of the pigs were fed an equivalent non-GM diet (the control group). The GM diet contained three GM genes and therefore three GM proteins. One protein made the plant resistant to a herbicide, and two proteins were insecticides.” The study ran 22.7 weeks, the normal lifespan of a commercial pig from weaning to slaughter. No such long-term study had ever before been done, a most alarming fact in itself. The scientists measured feed intake, weight gain, mortality and blood biochemistry. Organ weights and pathology were determined post-mortem. Those doing the autopsy were not told which group of pigs they were examining to avoid bias. In the female pigs, the scientists found that “on average, the weight of the uterus of pigs fed the GM diet, as a proportion of the weight of the pig, was 25% higher than the control pigs. We found that this biologically significant finding was also statistically significant. We list some of the pathologies that could be occurring in these uteri in the paper.” Among the possible pathologies indicated were endometrial hyperplasia or carcinoma, endometritis, endometriosis, adenomyosis, inflammation, a thickening of the myometrium, or the presence of polyps. The uteri from two GM-fed pigs were full of fluid compared to nil from non-GM-fed pigs. The level of severe inflammation in stomachs was markedly higher in pigs fed the GMO diet. “Pigs on the GM diet were 2.6 times more likely to get severe stomach inflammation than control pigs. Males were more strongly affected. While female pigs were 2.2 times more likely to get severe stomach inflammation when on the GM diet, males were 4 times more likely. These findings are both biologically significant and statistically significant,” Carman’s group observed.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 03:46:00 +0000
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