GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
        • Notícias em Português
        • Nieuws in het Nederlands
        • Nachrichten in Deutsch
      • Archive
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Donations
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
SUBSCRIBE TO REVIEWS

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

INTRODUCTION TO GM

GMO Myths and Facts front page.jpg

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE EDITING MYTHS AND REALITY

A guide through the smokescreen

Gene Editing Myths and Reality

ON-TARGET EFFECTS OF GENE EDITING

Damaged DNA

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

News Archive

  • 2022 articles
  • 2021 articles
  • 2020 articles
  • 2019 articles
  • 2018 articles
  • 2017 articles
  • 2016 articles
  • 2015 articles
  • 2014 articles
  • 2013 articles
  • 2012 articles
  • 2011 articles
  • 2010 articles
  • 2009 articles
  • 2008 articles
  • 2007 articles
  • 2006 articles
  • 2005 articles
  • 2004 articles
  • 2003 articles
  • 2002 articles
  • 2001 articles
  • 2000 articles

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

So-called "trillion meal study" of GMO safety is junk

  • Print
  • Email
Details
Published: 08 October 2014
Twitter

Van Eenennaam’s meta-analysis of livestock data doesn't support claims of GMO safety, writes environmental journalist Judson Parker

EXCERPT: This isn't a long-term study of animals living a full life-cycle. Instead, it's a study of 19 years' worth of 49 day-old chickens.

So-called "trillion meal study" of GMO safety is junk

Judson Parker
examiner.com, 8 Oct 2014
http://www.examiner.com/article/so-called-trillion-meal-study-of-gmo-safety-is-junk

A new study about the purported safety of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, was released to the public this month by former Monsanto employee Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam. The Monsanto Company is best known for creating and marketing genetically modified seeds that contain their own pesticides or which are designed to withstand applications of the company’s flagship herbicide Roundup (active ingredient: glyphosate).

Van Eenennaam’s study has been loudly touted by pro-GMO talking-heads, who claim it has “ended the debate” about the safety of GMOs in the food chain. The claim is impressive: over 100 billion animals consuming a total exceeding 1 trillion meals of genetically modified grain over a 19-year period show no statistical difference in health when compared with livestock fed a conventional diet.

Unfortunately for Dr. Van Eenennaam (and the circus of biotech industry bloggers promoting her), the claim is not supported by the evidence in her meta-analysis of livestock data.

First, let's have a look at what the author means by the "100 billion animals" she claims to have studied.

94.7% of the approximately 100 billion are broiler chickens, which the author neglects to disclose for 37 pages. These chickens would have a natural lifespan of about 5 years, but they don't live anywhere near that long in food production. Most are killed in their first 49 days.

In other words, this isn't a long-term study of animals living a full life-cycle. Instead, it's a study of 19 years' worth of 49 day-old chickens.

A real safety study should also be examining toxicology and/or histopathology data. But the Van Eenennaam study is mostly made-up of livestock production data, which focuses on animal weight, feed efficiency, and the amount of time it took to get an animal ready for market.

Even more interestingly, the data used in the study is made up almost entirely from statistics reported by the pro-industry Chicken Council. It's incredible that Van Eenennaam would try to pass this off as even remotely useful for evaluating human safety.

But even if Van Eenennaam were serious about the chicken data, what exactly would it show? Well, since it's almost exclusively about feeding efficiency and carcass weights, if we assumed the GMO grains being fed to the broiler chickens lead to improved weight gain, we could potentially attribute the human obesity epidemic to GMOs. This probably isn't the conclusion Van Eenennaam was going for.

The other 5% of the data comes from dairy and beef cattle. Both suffer from the same shortened lifespan (approximately 4 years out of an expected 15 year natural lifespan), making a full life-cycle analysis impossible. And to complicate matters, the study doesn't control for factors like hygiene, sanitation, or antibiotic use. Simply looking at milk production values or cattle weight tells us nothing about digestive, organ, or immune system health (which may also be obscured by the prolific rates of antibiotic use in modern industrial cattle production).

So in conclusion, we have a researcher with close ties to the biotech industry using poor data to make baseless assumptions about the safety of products which weren't even controlled for in her study. The data mostly consists of livestock production values, not toxicology or histopathology data, and very poor model organisms (broiler chickens) were used for the vast majority of the data tables. Finally, it is deceptive to promote this study as a "long-term analysis of safety", considering the shortened lifespans of the animals in question and the lack of any medically useful data.

Menu

Home

Subscriptions

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

Non-GM Successes

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

Donations

Content 1999 - 2022 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design