The Future of GM Technology...

[adoucette]

See Chimpkin's Updike quote above.

Oh BS

John Kopchinski, a former Pfizer sales representative whose complaint helped prompt the government’s Bextra case, said that company managers told him and others to dismiss concerns about the Neurontin case while pushing them to undertake similar illegal efforts on behalf of Bextra.

“The whole culture of Pfizer is driven by sales, and if you didn’t sell drugs illegally, you were not seen as a team player,” said Mr. Kopchinski, whose personal share of the Pfizer settlement is expected to exceed $50 million. Mr. Kopchinski left Pfizer in 2003.

Altogether, six whistle-blowers will collect $102 million from the federal share of the settlement and more from states’ shares

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/03health.html?_r=1

So there is in fact a HUGE incentive to be a whistle blower against someone with deep pockets like Monsanto.

Arthur

 

[Skeptical]

I have been away from my computer for about 6 hours, and 9 posts on this thread arrived, with what seems to be dozens of questions. If I answer them all, I will end up writing a very long missive which probably no-one will read. So if I miss what you consider important, feel free to ask again.

First to ultra.

No. I do not claim that GM is risk free. As I have said repeatedly, though you seem to like to overlook this, everything in this world carries risk. A woman once ended up with a bruised leg from a ricocheting meteorite. The next one could hit me on the head and kill me. Should I go through life wearing a crash helmet? No, of course not. We accept minor risks. GM foods and crops carry minor risks and it would be silly not to accept those minor risks also.

You ask me to provide proof that GM is safe. As I have pointed out, that is an impossibility. You are asking me to prove a negative. Safe also means 'not harmful', which is a negative.

However, in spite of numerous claims by the anti-GM movement, no-one has ever demonstrated in a way that stands up to good science, that a GM food has caused harm to a human eater, by virtue of its genetic modification. I know this because I have been following the GM debate for the last 12 years, and no such claim has managed to stand up to scientific enquiry.

However, even though I cannot prove a negative, it is easy to prove a positive that is correct. That means that you could prove GM is harmful, assuming that it really is. You should have no problem finding scientific studies, that stand up to further scrutiny, showing GM foods causing harm to people who eat them, by virtue of the modification.

I know you have looked, and failed.

To chimpkin

I fully understand about peanut and other food allergies. One person in 100 is allergic to peanuts, and one in 1000 will die if he/she eats a peanut, with no emergency medical care.

This has nothing to do with GM, except in your imagination.

I will agree that it is possible, in theory, for a GM product to make a protein that is an allergen. In fact, there was a GM soya bean once made in the laboratory that might carry that risk. The makers (not Monsanto) wanted to make a soya bean that carried a full protein complement, so that it would solve the problems of inadequate protein diets to poor nations.

They used gene insertion to make a soya bean that made, not only normal soya bean proteins, but also some brazil nut proteins. They discovered, though, that some of the brazil nut proteins were occasionally allergens and the project was stopped. This soya bean never hit agriculture, which I have always thought was a pity. While it may have caused some problems, it would definitely have gone a long way to stopping protein deficiency disease among many millions of poor people. Whatthehell!

As things stand to this point in time, no GM food has been shown to cause any allergy reaction, apart from that which the parent food crop already causes.

 

[adoucette]

Yes...corollary, Arthur. I added that as a corollary!

What I was saying is that gut bacteria could be transformed with GMO DNA (that is apparently more amenable to being taken up, due to the needs of the process) and produce something weird.

(So follow me here)

Your gut bacteria start producing a novel protein which your body can't handle, and you get allergies you never had, or Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome(IBS), or something weird.

Well you are just making this shit up you know.
And that sort of thing, assuming it was harmful, would be found in testing.

Now, since I'm reusing this:
( http://92.52.112.178/web/sa/saweb.n...94dada85ebee057180257194005ca7d0?OpenDocument)

We note the animal studies that the soil association referenced Monsanto's own studies showed immunological problems in rats fed GM corn, smaller kidneys in rats fed a specific GM corn, and fewer immature red blood cells in rats fed that same specific corn.

That corn being MON 863. It's been modified to produce BT toxin.

This is from that product's wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MON_863

So Monsanto is widely selling a product that caused problems in the test animals. Clear problems.

And to reveal their data, they had to be sued, again according to the wiki.

So I still say we need third party testing and far better monitoring of these products than we have...and that we need to be more careful with them. We absolutely can't trust the companies to do this at all. There needs to be a non-corrupt third party to do the research impartially.

But they DID release their data and there WAS 3rd party testing and that study you referenced WAS looked into.

And it didn't hold up.

FSANZ also independently investigated the material presented in the paper and concluded that the incidence of statistically significant differences in animals fed GM corn (MON863) is entirely consistent with normal background variability.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sci...s/factsheets2009/fsanzresponsetoseral4647.cfm

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

I fully understand about peanut and other food allergies. One person in 100 is allergic to peanuts, and one in 1000 will die if he/she eats a peanut, with no emergency medical care.

It's not that bad.

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/161/1/15#TABLEIRA00008T4

Indeed, according to the CDC there were an average of 9,537 hospital discharges per year with a diagnosis related to food allergy among children 0 to 17 years.

Which is rather insignificant in a country of about 80 million people < 17.

 

[iceaura]

So there is in fact a HUGE incentive to be a whistle blower against someone with deep pockets like Monsanto.

Which only matters if anyone was concerned with deliberate evil afoot. But that's your obsession.

We accept minor risks. GM foods and crops carry minor risks and it would be silly not to accept those minor risks also.

They aren't minor. They're huge. See "Irish Potato Famine".

However, even though I cannot prove a negative, it is easy to prove a positive that is correct. That means that you could prove GM is harmful, assuming that it really is.

No, we can't. There hasn't been enough time, there hasn't been enough money, and GM is a whole bunch of different things with each carrying their own potential disasters into the world.

What is easy to show, by reason and observation as we have, is that the risk of some of these GM techniques and deployments is monstrous. The level of ignorance coupled with just the potential disasters already known is disturbing in the extreme.

In fact, there was a GM soya bean once made in the laboratory that might carry that risk. The makers (not Monsanto) wanted to make a soya bean that carried a full protein complement, so that it would solve the problems of inadequate protein diets to poor nations.

They used gene insertion to make a soya bean that made, not only normal soya bean proteins, but also some brazil nut proteins. They discovered, though, that some of the brazil nut proteins were occasionally allergens and the project was stopped

Couple of details glossed over there: the problem with the allergens from Brazil nuts was not caught by the makers - it was caught by accident, by an outsider, by chance informed.

And the corrupted soy had already escaped auditing and control - some of it was found where it was not licensed ot legal to be.

And it was stopped because it alone - just that first batch - might have killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Coupled with gene transfer and cross-pollination in other soybeans, widespread use would have meant no one with a peanut allergy would have been able to eat soy products from then on.

 

[chimpkin]

Well you are just making this shit up you know.

Transformation...I'm wanting to say was discovered in the 20's.

As far as the rat feeding study goes, it looks like it comes down to what one would view as due to natural variance in the rats.

Some do, some don't view the organ variance as statistically significant.

Personally, I would have liked a lifespan study done on rats as a follow-up.

But that ties into what I've been saying all along: the need for more research and more caution.

Our differences here can be summed up pretty simply: you view GM as innocent until proven guilty. I view it as guilty until proven innocent.

@ Skeptical: I decided to look into who funds ISAAA, since you linked to them a while back...and indicated you thought them a credible source.

They seem to be funded by the same major biotech firms whose products they promote. Monsanto certainly is one.

As far as I'm concerned, that makes them interested parties-therefore biased.

Since you feel free to reject anything Greenpeace or anti-GM activist groups say out of hand without looking at their data first, I think I'll take that same liberty with any future ISAAA links you put up...

Anyway, if you'll follow the link below, there's a video interview with an ex-farmer who grew and fed GM corn to his pigs...and watched a huge number of them get reproductive problems, causing him to lose the farm.
Apparently five other farmers in his area that were feeding GM also had the same reproductive issues crop up in the pigs, and were feeding GM corn.

(And I'm sorry about the poor audio quality, but it's worth suffering through at least part of it.)

http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-videos/22-gm-and-agriculture/12983

 

[chimpkin]

Well you are just making this shit up you know.

Transformation...I'm wanting to say was discovered in the 20's.

As far as the rat feeding study goes, it looks like it comes down to what one would view as due to natural variance in the rats.

Some do, some don't view the organ variance as statistically significant.

Personally, I would have liked a lifespan study done on rats as a follow-up.

But that ties into what I've been saying all along: the need for more research and more caution.

Our differences here can be summed up pretty simply: you view GM as innocent until proven guilty. I view it as guilty until proven innocent.

@ Skeptical: I decided to look into who funds ISAAA, since you linked to them a while back...and indicated you thought them a credible source.

They seem to be funded by the same major biotech firms whose products they promote. Monsanto certainly is one.

As far as I'm concerned, that makes them interested parties-therefore biased.

Since you feel free to reject anything Greenpeace or anti-GM activist groups say out of hand without looking at their data first, I think I'll take that same liberty with any future ISAAA links you put up...

Anyway, if you'll follow the link below, there's a video interview with an ex-farmer who grew and fed GM corn to his pigs...and watched a huge number of them get reproductive problems, causing him to lose the farm.
Apparently five other farmers in his area that were feeding GM also had the same reproductive issues crop up in the pigs, and were feeding GM corn.

(And I'm sorry about the poor audio quality, but it's worth suffering through at least part of it.)

http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-videos/22-gm-and-agriculture/12983

 

[Skeptical]

iceaura regurgitated his usual emetic emissions by saying : "They're huge. See "Irish Potato Famine"

Hey iceaura
Why not blame the Black Death of the 13th century on GM as well. It is just as relevent. For Finagle's sake, get real! The Irish potato famine has nothing to do with GM. It is another world. If you cannot debate sensibly, then retire.

To Chimpkin

Re ISAAA

I admitted early on their bias. You add nothing to the debate by reinforcing that point. However, the ISAAA, despite their bias, is a bunch of scientists, unlike the bulldust references that iceaura and ultra keep posting. As a result the ISAAA give good data, even though their interpretations are biased. If you feel unable to separate the two, say so. The rest of us are smart enough.

 

[iceaura]

Why not blame the Black Death of the 13th century on GM as well. It is just as relevent. For Finagle's sake, get real! The Irish potato famine has nothing to do with GM. It is another world

The Plague organism is still with us, coming into daily contact with GM organisms, and with a little bad luck the wrong GM technique carelessly employed could very well restore its mass lethality.

It's a long shot, but how long a shot remains to be seen. The situation requires prudent, careful, detailed, thorough, and diligent regulation.

Meanwhile, as detailed above, the parallels between the Irish potato famine setup and the current wholesale marketing of proprietary and narrow-range GM crops as basic and staple sources of calories for large regions of the globe are numerous and very close. That may not even be long shot - inevitability, might be better description.

Take warning, or sail on blindly - your choice.

 

[adoucette]

Our differences here can be summed up pretty simply: you view GM as innocent until proven guilty. I view it as guilty until proven innocent.

Yes, but you have a low threshold for seeing guilt where none seems to exist.

Anyway, if you'll follow the link below, there's a video interview with an ex-farmer who grew and fed GM corn to his pigs...and watched a huge number of them get reproductive problems, causing him to lose the farm.
Apparently five other farmers in his area that were feeding GM also had the same reproductive issues crop up in the pigs, and were feeding GM corn.

Except as we have seen GM corn is by far the most cultivated corn in the US and Hogs are fed large quantities of corn.

If feeding GM corn to your hogs causes infertility how is it that there isn't a HUGE shortage of hogs?

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

Couple of details glossed over there: the problem with the allergens from Brazil nuts was not caught by the makers - it was caught by accident, by an outsider, by chance informed.

And the corrupted soy had already escaped auditing and control - some of it was found where it was not licensed ot legal to be.

And it was stopped because it alone - just that first batch - might have killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Coupled with gene transfer and cross-pollination in other soybeans, widespread use would have meant no one with a peanut allergy would have been able to eat soy products from then on.

Hmmmm?
No source for said claims I see.

What can we find:

The soybean, developed by Pioneer Hi-Bred, was modified by the introduction of a gene from the Brazil nut. The intention was to improve the nutritional quality of the soybean by adding the amino acid methionine, which is low in soybean and abundant in the Brazil nut. Because allergies to nuts are common, the use of a nut as the donor of the transgene raised eyebrows among regulators. The transgenic soybean was tested (Nordlee et al., 1996) and people who had allergic reactions to Brazil nuts also had allergic reactions to the genetically engineered soybean. It appeared that the gene chosen to improve nutritional quality was one of the genes that trigger allergic reactions. Pioneer had intended to market the soybean only for animal feed, but the difficulty of keeping animal feed separate from human food during harvesting, transport, and storage became a consideration. Pioneer decided not to ask for approval to market the soybean. It was never approved by the government and was never grown commercially or sold in stores.

http://cls.casa.colostate.edu/transgeniccrops/allergy.html

And then there is the referenced Nordlee Study

IDENTIFICATION OF A BRAZIL-NUT ALLERGEN IN TRANSGENIC SOYBEANS

And what do you know in the first page we have the reason for the study:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has directed developers of new plant varieties to consider the allergenic potential of donor organisms in assessing the safety of foods derived from genetically engineered plants. If there is insufficient information to demonstrate that the introduced protein
could not cause allergic reactions in a susceptible population, then the food would require a label to alert consumers to this fact.

And at bottom of page 1:

Supported by a grant from Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.

http://www.salmone.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/noce-nejm-1996.pdf

Now the other fact about this is that these Soy Beans were not bred for human consumption, Pioneer Hi-Bred was testing genetic engineering to increase the level of the amino acid methionine in soybean.
Why?
Because a high-methionine soybean would aid chicken farmers who now must buy expensive methionine supplements for their birds.

The reason Pioneer pulled these Soy Beans is because the scientific tests they paid for prior to releasing the new variety showed they caused a potential serious allergic reaction in a few people and because Pioneer could not guarantee that even though the new bean might be sold only for Chicken feed they knew some would find its way into the normal food channels.

Arthur

 

[ULTRA]

Sceptic, it would be easy to prove that GM was safe, if it was true. There would be an absence of reported side effects, poisionings, allergies and GM genetic transfer. Simple if it was true, which evidently it is not.
Drug companies have to prove their products are safe all the time in clinical trials, so your claim is false.
What you will have to do is research every reported ill effect of GMOs and find an alternative hypothesis for them, and prove that. Granted, it will take you some time, but it should have been done prior to release, as drug companies do all the time in clinical trials. Your claim it cannot be done is FALSE. Your claim that this information would somehow infringe on copyright is also false, again, drug companies publish all known side-effects all the time without such detriment.
GM producers should do exactly the same, but obviously prefer to hide all such information from consumers.

At least Arthur has taken the time to learn something about the science during the course of this thread. You just keep repeating the same tired old crap. It's safe, because you claim it is. No proof, nothing. Utter rubbish.

 

[adoucette]

Sceptic, it would be easy to prove that GM was safe, if it was true. There would be an absence of reported side effects, poisionings, allergies and GM genetic transfer. Simple if it was true, which evidently it is not.

Well I've yet to see a documented case where someone was harmed by GM foods, or where the "side effects" were different in magnitude than the original food.
Poisonings? Now that's a new one do you have a source for that?
So far for GM genetic transfer we've seen no evidence of Genetic transfer to humans.

Drug companies have to prove their products are safe all the time in clinical trials, so your claim is false.

Well that's a little backwards.
Clinical trials are predominately to find out if the drug has the desired effects.
It doesn't have to be safe if the typical anticipated gain outweighs the typical negative impacts. Indeed Penicillin is NOT safe, if you are allergic to it, and as Chimkin pointed out, one of the possible side effects of a drug he was considering was DEATH.
Which, if you note, is a possible side effect of many of our drugs.

So no, a human clinical trial in the typical sense would not work for GM foods as there is nothing you are trying to cure and we simply have no way of making up control groups etc etc.

What you will have to do is research every reported ill effect of GMOs and find an alternative hypothesis for them, and prove that.

Never going to happen.

Granted, it will take you some time, but it should have been done prior to release, as drug companies do all the time in clinical trials. Your claim it cannot be done is FALSE.

No it's not.
They can do feeding tests on Lab Rats and if they supsect allergic issues they can do those test, but tests on humans would be highly unlikely.

Your claim that this information would somehow infringe on copyright is also false, again, drug companies publish all known side-effects all the time without such detriment.
GM producers should do exactly the same, but obviously prefer to hide all such information from consumers.

I don't think there are any GM products with known side effects beyond what the normal food does. If you know of some please post source.

Finally, in the US MOST of the GM products are in fact consumed in our Feed Lots, and modern Farmers are pretty good at keeping records, you know, amount of food fed, weight gained, livestock losses, breeding rates etc etc.

So, in the US, 86% of our Corn is GM.
In 2000, the U.S. produced ~10 billion bushels of the world’s total 23 billion bushel corn crop, so about 8 billion bushels of GM corn are being consumed each year by animals and 1 billion bushels by people. That's a LOT of GM corn being eaten!

About 80% of all corn grown in the U.S. is consumed by domestic and overseas livestock, poultry, and fish production.

SO, if GM corn was having these kind of problems you KNOW that this would be seen by these farmers.

I can find no evidence of that.


Now for Soy Beans, 93% is GM and 2.8 billion bushels of soybeans were harvested in the U.S. in 2000 accounting for over 50% of the world’s soybean production and produced ~79% of all edible oil consumed in the US as well as over 30 million tons of soybean meal for consumption by livestock.

SO, if GM Soy Beans were having these kind of problems you KNOW that this would be seen by these farmers as well.

I can find no evidence of that either.

So the truth is we are raising our livestock on almost all GM food, and feedlots and animal husbandry are essentially large in vivo tests simply because of how computerized/statistical large scale farming has become and search as I may, I can't find anything to substantiate your claims that this GM food is in someway hurting our country's animals or people.

Arthur

http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropmajor.html

 

[iceaura]

The reason Pioneer pulled these Soy Beans is because the scientific tests they paid for prior to releasing the new variety showed they caused a potential serious allergic reaction in a few people and because Pioneer could not guarantee that even though the new bean might be sold only for Chicken feed they knew some would find its way into the normal food channels.

And the reason they had done no such testing until after they had invested millions in development, and were at the point of commercial rollout?

The reason they did not test until 1996 the very expensive modification they had been working on since 1992 or before, and with much effort brought to the point of commercial marketing worldwide?

Because they didn't see the problem, and weren't forced to investigate it. Until outside whistleblowers, accidentally informed of the provenance of the new wonderful chicken feed, made it clear that there was a potential danger here, Pioneer was perfectly happy to mass market its soybeans, and planned to do so, and had passed all US government and regulatory requirements.

I don't think there are any GM products with known side effects beyond what the normal food does.

Nobody knows. Look at how long it took to come to awareness of the trans fat problems - and trans fats can be discontinued. They don't reproduce themselves.

 

[ULTRA]

"A new paper shows that consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys. By reviewing data from 19 animal studies, Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and others reveal that 9% of the measured parameters, including blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses (histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver of females followed, with 30.8%"
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

 

[adoucette]

And the reason they had done no such testing until after they had invested millions in development, and were at the point of commercial rollout?

The reason they did not test until 1996 the very expensive modification they had been working on since 1992 or before, and with much effort brought to the point of commercial marketing worldwide?

Because they didn't see the problem, and weren't forced to investigate it. Until outside whistleblowers, accidentally informed of the provenance of the new wonderful chicken feed, made it clear that there was a potential danger here, Pioneer was perfectly happy to mass market its soybeans, and planned to do so, and had passed all US government and regulatory requirements.

Why do you offer no proof of your assertions?

The FDA did cover this issue in 1992.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceCom...GuidanceDocuments/Biotechnology/ucm096095.htm

And the little I can find from back then shows some of your data is in error:

Steve Taylor practically yawned when researchers at Pioneer Hi-Bred, the giant agricultural seed company, asked him in 1995 to study a new soybean they had invented. "I didn't think we'd find anything interesting," the University of Nebraska scientist recently recalled.

Not 1996.

And given that since 1992 the FDA has required allergy tests like the ones Taylor did for all new food made with genes taken from milk, eggs, wheat, fish, shellfish, legumes or nuts implies that Pioneer would have done this testing without outside prodding.

Arthur

 

[Skeptical]

My thanks to Arthur for his good work while I have raising zzz's. (We have a different time zone. I am asleep while you guys are swapping posts.)

I see that Ultra continues to use non reputable web sites for this references. One glance at the site of the Institute for Responsible Technology shows they are political, not scientific.

Ultra, you said : "Your claim that this information would somehow infringe on copyright is also false, again, drug companies publish all known side-effects all the time without such detriment".

In fact, I have never even mentioned copyright, which is not the issue. Copyright is a very separate legal category.

I have said that companies who present detailed information on safety to regulatory authorities will require those authorities to sign confidentiality agreements, which is quite a different thing. This is done to protect the multi-million dollar investments those companies make in safety and toxicology testing.

 

[ULTRA]

Sceptic, I don't care what you think, you have provided no scientific evidence to back up your ridiculous minority claim.

 

[iceaura]

And given that since 1992 the FDA has required allergy tests like the ones Taylor did for all new food made with genes taken from milk, eggs, wheat, fish, shellfish, legumes or nuts implies that Pioneer would have done this testing without outside prodding.

The FDA does not require allergy testing of chicken feed, and Pioneer's testing was not a result of FDA pressure.

And the FDA would not necessarily have required the allergy testing of a single inserted protein - the only declared or "active" insert - anyway.

The fact that the product was already marketable - about to be mass marketed world wide - is proof that the company did not allergy test as a matter of routine. They allergy tested because they were confronted with questions of risk, by outsiders. None of their people - even their trusted scientific consultants - had rung any alarm bells at any time in the past several years of development. This was their attitude:

Steve Taylor practically yawned when researchers at Pioneer Hi-Bred, the giant agricultural seed company, asked him in 1995 to study a new soybean they had invented. "I didn't think we'd find anything interesting," the University of Nebraska scientist recently recalled.

 

[adoucette]

"A new paper shows that consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys. By reviewing data from 19 animal studies, Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and others reveal that 9% of the measured parameters, including blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses (histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver of females followed, with 30.8%"
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

Actually it is not any new tests, but a "meta analysis" of old tests, so really no new tests were performed by this group and they didn't say significant organ disruptions.

In the next sentance they did use the word SIGNIFICANT, but they used it in it's scientific meaning, i.e. More than chance, not in it's other meaning as "of great concern"

a total of around 9% of parameters were disrupted in a meta-analysis (Table 2).

They also said that around 5% was normal, so it's just slightly elevated.
My guess is this is why no one will be worried about this new Meta-Analysis of old studies as this is just another paper by the same French group (Séralini) we have been discussing that FSANZ has already dismisssed.

Séralini and colleagues have now published several papers reporting on feeding studies with GM foods. In June 2009, Séralini and colleagues repeated claims made in an earlier article (Séraliniet al., 2007) that a statistical re-analysis of the toxicity data originally reported by Hammondet al., 2006 provided evidence of hepatorenal effects in rats fed GM maize for three months. No new data were presented in the article. Instead, the authors commented on a published report by an expert panel (Doullet al., 2007) that discussed the risk assessment conducted by Séraliniet al. 2007. For reasons not stated, the authors did not address the numerous deficiencies of their statistical re-analysis that had been reported by several international regulatory agencies (FSANZ 2007; EFSA 2007a; EFSA 2007 b; Monod 2007). Instead, they chose to focus on the issues raised in a later published report by Doull et al., 2007. In the absence of new data and the failure of the authors to acknowledge that the interpretation of toxicity studies does not only involve statistics but requires the need for biological context, FSANZ is of the opinion that the recent article from Séralini et al. provides no grounds to revise its previous conclusions on the safety of food derived from MON 863 corn. The FSANZ assessment concluded that food derived from MON 863 corn is as safe and wholesome as food derived from other commercial corn varieties.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sci...s/factsheets2009/fsanzresponsetoseral4647.cfm

The reason I trust FSANZ is that as far as I can tell are isolated from US corporate interests.

We might have to wait a while till this gets reviewed by other agencies like FSANZ, but it seems to me that what we have is a .

Arthur