Cows Ate GM Maize and Died

[SoCalDem]

http://www.coastalpost.com/04/04/19.htm

April, 2004
Cows Ate GM Maize and Died-Public Inquiry Needed

Could this be the "three mile island" or the "thalidomide" of GM: the clinching evidence that there is something seriously wrong with most if not all GM food and feed? Twelve dairy cows died in Hesse, Germany after being fed Syngenta's Bt176 GM maize; and other cows had to be slaughtered due to mysterious illnesses. Protestors in front of the Robert Koch Institute suspect a cover-up. But is there a news blackout as well?

There has been no coverage in the mainstream media; not even after ISIS circulated a detailed report, showing how Bt176 has the worst of features common to practically all commercially approved GM crops. Not only is Bt176 unstable like all GM varieties analysed so far, it is also non-uniform, so that different samples of the variety gave different results. Either of those features would make the GM variety illegal under European law.

The dead cows in Hesse are not an isolated case. In 1999, Pusztai and colleagues reported that GM potato engineered with the snowdrop lectin adversely affected every organ system of young rats; in particular, it made their stomach lining twice as thick. Scientists in Egypt found similar effects in mice fed a Bt potato. Several years earlier, the US Food and Drug Administration already had data showing that rats fed a GM tomato with an antisense gene to delay ripening developed holes in their stomach. Add to that the report from Aventis (now Bayer) which showed that glufosinate-tolerant T25 GM maize (about to be approved for growing by the Blair government) killed twice as many broiler chickens compared to non-GM maize, and a host of anecdotal evidence that livestock, wildlife and lab animals avoid GM feed when given the choice, and failed to thrive or died when forced to eat it.

There must now be a public enquiry, not only into the safety of GM food and feed, but especially on why this and other evidence have been systematically misrepresented, suppressed, ignored and denied in the rush to commercialize GM crops and GM food and feed. It amounts to a serious abuse of science and scientific evidence, and our governments' scientific advisors must be called into proper account.

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The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR

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[slor]

1. I thought the Europeans...

were vehemently opposed to GM foods even coming onto the continent? I guess it was just food for humans, but I suppose this will be good enough reason to stop this the practice completely.