I remember reading, a couple of years ago, when I was just getting interested in GM food issues, that there had been problems with babies in the Philippines from canned baby food containing GM product. I remember staying up most of one night trying to get to the bottom of the story, to find out that it was a ‘Greenpeace hypothesis’.
A couple of days ago I asked The Australian newspaper if they were interested in an opinion piece from me covering Dr Charles Benbrook’s claims that GM technology is failing in the US with record herbicide usage and out-of-control weeds, read my blog piece by clicking here.
Anyway, they published the piece by me today, click here to read it.
Journalist Rick Wallace phoned after I had sent off the piece interested in my claim that Victorian dairy farmers were feeding their cows GM soy. I suggested he get the full story from David Tribe.
It seems he also phoned Jeremy Tager from Greenpeace – fair enough – except that Jeremy seems to mostly just make it up as he goes along. Cop this for a claim from Jeremy in today’s The Australian:
Greenpeace genetic engineering campaigner Jeremy Tager said the only five independent studies of the effect of GM foods on stock had found immune deficiencies, failure to gain weight and damage to certain organs.
“We are absolutely opposed to GM stock feeds,” he said. “The question of how cattle digest GM feeds is something that needs serious study.”
How could about 370,000 tonnes of GM soy be imported into Australia last year, for animal and human consumption, if there was a problem with it? Why would the Europeans import GM soy worth $858 million last year if there was a problem with it? Foods have to pass standards – even if Greenpeace don’t.
But hey, if there really is a study that has been done somewhere that provides some evidence to support Jeremy’s claim that GM soy damages organs, affects the immune system, stock fed it don’t put on weight, or anything else, let me know. I will publish the information at this blog.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The interesting point is that the Australian has ensured that an article that is counter to the Greenpeace/Trotskyite line is always met with a response while the same is rarely the case with a Bush Bashing piece. The fact is that anything relating to farming goes automatically to the environment desk where it is revised, reinterpreted and “corrected” to comply with the party line. Well, we really couldn’t have an informed urban public now, could we?
Nice one teach, from a lay point of view green peace should look at GM everywhere in animal husbandry. Do most dogs look like wolves or foxes etc. No. GM has been our history, the world as we know it today could not sustain agricultural or animal strands of two thousand years ago.
This is not to say there shouldn’t be oversight but the green peace method of negotiation appears to be not negotiate but be political.
I much suspect that Greenpeace representatives are not so much spinning on purpose as from lacking the ability to critically review data.
They are essentially uneducated but superbly trained, or to use a less used term, brainwashed.
They actually believe this nonsense and there isn’t a thinhg we can do about it.
Sad.
Most claims by anti-GM NGOs raising doubts about GM animal feeds focus on the relatively infrequent occasions when the average for the GM feed group is a bit lower that the control group.
The NGOs generally do not discuss whether the observed difference is statistically significant.
The classical example is Pusztai and his GM pototoes.
Further, they never ask, if some variation in result is observed, what is the normal background variation in different diets. Eg Uncooked pototo diets are bad for anyone and induce a lot of gut variability. If GM pototoes are being examined this type of variation has to be thought. I suspect hot Indian curries would fail the NGO safety criteria every time, also Mexican food!
The most strange feeding test result would be that if every GM test showed that the GM fed group were always better that the non-GM control group. If that were the case, we should indeed suspect something fishy is going on. That isn’t happening: sometimes GM feeding gives a little bit worse results.
All of these comments just made are standard biological statistical prudence about the meaning of numbers when variation occurs in samples from a poulation being assessed. These cautions are tought in every University Biology degree. It is wrong for any group to jump to conclusions by ignoring these cautions. The fact that Greenpeace doesn’t observe these cautions suggest that they are deficient in professional level statistics.
A final thought. The economics of stock-feeding is tied to good growth of animals. If these GM stock-feed materials caused bad growth or slowed animal weight gains, the stock feed related companies would, out of self interest, want to avoid them. If significant effects were there, and with massive use of these GM feeds in industries world-wide, it’s rather strange that they are not showing up in reduced profits in the cattle, chook, and pig husbandry industries.
GMO Pundit http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/
In their latest publication the Organic Federation of Australia have stated that “there is a need for all genetically modified plants to be tested with independent, rigorous peer reviewed feeding trials.”
They then run with the Irina Ermakova story on GM soy which was presented to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. They did not include the statement made by the AAEM: “We recognize this study is preliminary in nature. It hasn’t yet been peer reviewed and the methodology has not been spelled out in detail.
http://www.physorg.com/news7740.html
Similarly with the reference to Dr Arpad Pusztai whose research attracted the following peer review;
“I would not recommend this paper be accepted for publication in its current form. In my experience as an editor and reviewer it would be rejected by the British Journal of Nutrition, Journal of Nutrition and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Although the report is of poor quality, the subject matter is novel so I would not to reject it outright even though the first three studies are fundamentally flawed in their design (deficient in protein). I would invite the author to respond to detailed criticisms and consider a revised version with more detail and suggest further studies, particularly with regard to the lymphocyte proliferation studies {a test of the immune system}, which are unconvincing.”
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Arpad-Pusztai-Potato.htm
Is this a case of blatant discrimination?
I noted with interest that the Greenpeace expert commentator, Jeremy Tager, who has got a legal background, wanted more testing of cattle and how they digest GM feeds.
Greenpeace has waged a very public campaign against poultry industry, Inghams etc. to steer them away from GM feed. This is the first instance that I know where Greenpeace has officially acknowledged that our beef and dairy cattle are fed imported GM soy and GM maize.
There are many including Graeme O’Neill(www.ipa.org.au/files/review56-2.pdf) that believes that the decisions on the GM moratoria in at least Victoria were taken due to pressure put on the Victorian Government by lobby groups targeting the States most lucrative primary export industry – dairying.
While Greenpeace has gone after our poultry producers it has kept quite or in the case of Gene Ethics Network lauded the ‘GM free stance’ that the dairy industry has taken. The way to protect the ‘clean and green’ image of the Victorian primary export industry i.e. dairy industry and giving it ‘GM free’ status has more to do with marketing and less to do with reality. Our dairy cows are fed GM soy and in some years GM maize. The cows in Queensland and NSW are feed GM cotton trash.
The emperor is naked for all to see.
Steps out from the debate
ionolsen23 May we exchange links with your site?
6ea96e71692c I will come to read your blog again