Food Safety Minister to table GE Freeze Petition.

Food Safety Minister has confirmed that she will table an 1800 signature petition asking her to Freeze all new GE applications and review existing ones, in Parliament that GE Free NZ presented to the Minister at a meeting last week.

She however acknowledges that she does not agree with the petitions points.

Her reasons are “existing evidence does not indicate that such a risk exists”, she then goes says “International guidelines indicate that animals feeding studies are not necessary for GM food safety issues, due to inherent issues with design of the studies”.

This comment comes when the first long term farmer study on animals consuming GE foods has been published. For many years farmers have been relating concerns over the adverse effects on digestive and reproductive disorders they are seeing in their animals.

The International study published in the June issue of Journal of Organic Systems on the long term toxicology of pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet [1] has confirmed that there are significant health issues from GE foods on the digestive systems especially stomachs and the uterine systems of pigs.

Associate Professor Dr. Judy Carman is an epidemiologist and biochemist and director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Adelaide, Australia was the lead researcher.

The double blind study was conducted over 22.7 weeks; the accepted commercial life span from weaning to slaughter, using 168 newly weaned pigs in a commercial U.S. piggery. The weaned pigs were randomly assigned to two groups of 84 pigs; equal numbers of male and female pigs were present in the GM and control group. The GM corn contained double and triple-stacked varieties. There were no differences between pigs fed the GM and non-GM diets for feed intake, weight gain, mortality, and routine blood biochemistry measurements. The GM diet was associated with significant differences in the gastric and uterine organs. GM-fed pigs had uteri that were 25% heavier than non-GM fed pigs (p=0.025). GM-fed pigs had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation with a rate of 32% of GM-fed pigs compared to 12% of non-GM-fed pigs (p=0.004). The severe stomach inflammation was worse in GM-fed males compared to non-GM fed males by a factor of 4.0 (p=0.041), and GM-fed females compared to non-GM fed females by a factor of 2.2 (p=0.034).

“We fully support Dr. Carman’s and her colleagues conclusions that in light of her studies findings there needs to be long-term animal feeding studies conducted on GE foods” said Claire Bleakley, president of GE Free NZ.

Long term Feeding studies on all GE applications would bring the FSANZ assessments into line with the European Food Safety Authority guidelines who require a minimum of 90 days feeding study for all GE applications.

“We are pleased the Minister is going to forward the issues raised in the petition and hope that she might review her reasons after reading the studies we provided her and this double blind farmer substantiated GE food study before she tables the petition”.

We are still awaiting the outcome of the meeting of the Regulatory Review committee.

References:

[1] Carman J., Vlieger H., Veer Steeg L., Sneller V., Robinson G., Jones C, Haynes J. & Edwards J. (2013) A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet Journal of Organic Systems Vol.8 No.1 http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/abstracts/8106.html

Find a clear summary of the study here: http://gmojudycarman.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Summary-of-research.pdf

Find the full paper here: http://gmojudycarman.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Full-Paper.pdf

Website GMOJudyCarman.org with full information on Dr Judy Carman’s work: http://www.gmojudycarman.org

Minister receives 1000+ signature petition to review GE foods. http://press.gefree.org.nz/press/20130506.htm

ENDS

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