General

At first glance the frozen bundles could be mistaken for conventional joints of meat. But as Ib Pedersen, a Danish pig farmer, lifts them carefully out of the freezer it becomes apparent they are in fact whole piglets - some horribly deformed, with growths or other abnormalities, others stunted. This is the result, Pedersen claims, of feeding the animals a diet containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Or more specifically, he believes, feed made from GM soya and sprayed with the controversial herbicide glyphosate. Pedersen, who produces 13,000 pigs a year and supplies Europe's largest pork company Danish Crown, says he became so alarmed at the apparent levels of deformity, sickness, deaths, and poor productivity he was witnessing in his animals that he decided to experiment by changing their diet from GM to non-GM feed. The results, he says, were remarkable: "When using GM feed I saw symptoms of bloat, stomach ulcers, high rates of diarrhoea, pigs born with the deformities ... but when I switched [to non GM feed] these problems went away, some within a matter of days." The farmer says that not only has the switch in diet improved the visible health of the pigs, it has made the farm more profitable, with less medicine use and higher productivity. "Less abortions, more piglets born in each litter, and breeding animals living longer." He also maintains that man hours have been reduced, with less cleaning needed and fewer complications with the animals.

As UK officials tout GMO foods as ‘safe’ compared to organic crops, results of a long-term, peer-reviewed study conducted by a group of scientists led by Dr Judy Carman of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Australia has been released – and it proves that GMO are anything but ‘safe.’ Livestock in the UK and around the world have been fed GMO for over two decades, since the USDA authorized the commercial sale of GMO soy and corn to feed not only animals, but human beings in 1996. Much of the meat raised on these GMO crop are sent overseas, to countries like the UK, elsewhere in Europe, and even to cattle-abundant nations like Australia. This most recent study proves that a more sober examination of the long term effects of GMO on our environment and health should be demanded of corporations like Monsanto, even as other evidence mounts that GMO crops are unhealthy, especially considering that nations trying to remove GMO from their food supply are still being devastated by its ill-effects.

A butterfly at risk from pesticides and a plant potentially targeted by collectors are B.C.'s newest endangered species, according to an annual assessment by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). The Oregon branded skipper (Hesperia colorado oregonia) inhabits sparsely vegetated at-risk Garry Oak and coastal sandspit ecosystems and is found in only four of 16 fragmented sites totalling less than 16 square kilometres. It is threatened by the application of Btk pesticide used to control the invasive gypsy moth and by the encroachment of vegetation in open habitats. Also endangered is Tweedy's Lewisia, a showy perennial plant that exists in two small sub-populations and has undergone a decline of up to 30 per cent in recent years.

Imidacloprid was applied as Confidor® 200 SC at the recommended field dose of 100 g a.i./ha to a Portuguese rice plot. Subsequently, fate of the test compound in water and potential effects of water samples on a battery of test species were determined. As compared to the first-tier predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) calculated using MED-Rice (around 30 µg/L depending on the scenario used) and US-EPA (78 µg/L) simulations, the actual peak concentration measured in the paddy water (52 µg/L) was higher and lower, respectively. As was anticipated based on 50% effect concentrations (EC50 values) for Daphnia magna published in the open literature and that calculated in the present study (48 h-EC50 immobility=84 mg/L), no effects were observed of field water samples on daphnids. The sediment-dwelling ostracod Heterocypris incongruens, however, appeared relatively sensitive towards imidacloprid (6 d-EC50 growth inhibition=0.01–0.015 mg/L) and a slight effect was indeed noted in field samples taken the first week after application. Species sensitivity distributions based on published EC50 and NOEC values also revealed that other species are likely to be affected at the peak and time-weighted average imidacloprid concentrations, respectively. By applying the relative tolerance approach (i.e. by dividing the EC50 value of a certain species with that of Daphnia magna), ostracods appear to contain the most sensitive taxa to imidacloprid, followed by EPT (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera) taxa.

The persistence and metabolism of imidacloprid in sugarcane leaves and juice were studied following application of imidacloprid @ 20 and 80 g a.i. ha−1. Samples of sugarcane leaves were collected at various time intervals (7, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 days after treatment), whereas those of juice were collected at the time of harvest. The residues of imidacloprid and its metabolites (6-chloronicotinic acid, nitrosimine, imidacloprid-NTG, olefin, urea and 5-hydroxy) were quantified by high-performance liquid chromatograph. In leaves, the total imidacloprid residues were mainly constituted by the parent compound followed by 6-chloronicotinic acid metabolite. Total residues of imidacloprid and its metabolites were found to be 4.97 and 12.99 mg kg−1 in sugarcane leaves collected 7 days after the application of imidacloprid @ 20 and 80 g a.i. ha−1 respectively. At both the doses, these residues declined to below the detectable limit in the leaves after 90 days of application with the half-life values of 9.68 and 8.14 days of imidacloprid @ 20 and 80 g a.i. ha−1 respectively. The total toxic residues of imidacloprid in sugarcane leaves were 0.90 and 6.29 mg kg−1 at 7 days after treatment of imidacloprid @ 20 and 80 g a.i. ha−1 respectively. The bioconcentration factor in sugarcane leaves was 0.35 and 1.03 in the lower and higher dose respectively at 7 days after treatment. The total residues followed the pseudo first order kinetics with R2 of 0.9243 and 0.944 for recommended dose and four times the recommended dose, respectively. The residues of imidacloprid and its metabolites were not detected in samples of sugarcane juice.

Once it became clear to citrus growers that the British hate to peel anything and can’t face pips in any number, efforts were concentrated on producing easy-to-eat fruit for a nation that must be strong-armed into eating its five a day. The fresh fruit eventually arrived in wooden trays, precious little gifts individually wrapped in tissue paper. They were expensive – there were no bogof deals then. But the mandarins, tangerines and satsumas in today’s fruit section of Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Asda are on permanent special offer. The most irritating thing about the convenience fruit mountains, however, is not only the manipulation of the skin, but the use of pesticides. When the government-backed Pesticides Residue Committee (PRC) last tested soft citrus in 2008, 24 out of 24 samples were found to contain residues of agricultural chemicals. Nineteen of the samples were from outside the EU, five from the EU and 10 out of the total 24 contained residues of three separate chemicals.

Das Schnellwarnsystem für Lebensmittel (Rapid Alert System for Food, RASSF) hat den Eintritt von drei getrennten Paprikaposten aus der Türkei in der Europäischen Union (EU) festgestellt, die zerstört wurden, da sie bei weitem die Maximalen Rückstandsmengen (MRL) mit dem weltweit verwendeten Insektizid Malathion überschritten, die erlaubt sind. Das Brüssel dienende RASSF sagte, das ist ohne Zweifel die schwerste Feststellung bei Gemüse in den letzten Monaten. Und die kompetenten Behörden für dieses Thema in dem UK waren gezwungen, eine Lieferung grüne Bohnen aus Kenia zu zerstören, die einen Cocktail an Pestziden enthielt, darunter die 31,5-fache Menge von Dimethoate als erlaubt. Malathion ist ein starkes phosphororganisches Insektizid. In zwei Fällen waren die in der EU akzeptierten MRL für diese Chemikalie mit Werten von 0,4 und 0,038 Milligramm pro Kilogramm der Substanz bei den Proben überschritten, bei Paprika sind maximal 0,02 Milligramm erlaubt sind. Die dritte Probe hat die MRL jedoch bei weitem überstiegen, da das Malathion bei 0,288 Milligramm pro Kilo lag, was das 14,4-fache des Erlaubten ist.

Upon request from the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was asked to develop guiding principles that would aid the future establishment of protocols for chronic toxicity and/or carcinogenicity studies in rodents with whole food/feed. It was agreed that this EFSA scientific report would be a commentary on OECD TG 453, with specific considerations related to whole food/feed. The mandate was assigned to an internal EFSA task force composed of staff members with different key scientific expertise and was endorsed by the EFSA Scientific Committee. Experts in the role of external reviewers and Member State representatives of the EFSA GMO Network provided valuable comments during the development of the document. This scientific report comments on the applicability of OECD Test Guideline 453 for the carcinogenicity and chronic toxicity testing of chemicals (OECD, 2009a) for the purpose of testing whole food/feed. The report includes specific recommendations for performing and reporting experiments carried out with whole food/feed. These recommendations are in line with the guiding principles previously developed in the EFSA scientific opinion on conducting repeated-dose 90-day oral toxicity studies in rodents with whole food/feed.

The editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), Dr A. Wallace Hayes, has decided to retract the study by the team of Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini, which found that rats fed a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 and tiny amounts of the Roundup herbicide it is grown with suffered severe toxic effects, including kidney and liver damage and increased rates of tumours and mortality.[1] GMWatch believes FCT’s retraction of Prof Séralini’s paper to be illicit, unscientific, and unethical. It violates the guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),[2] of which FCT is a member.[3]. Video: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/12/how-monsanto-silences-scientific-di…

Le chercheur français Gilles-Éric Séralini a contesté jeudi le retrait de son étude controversée sur les effets d'OGM consommés par des rats, parue en septembre 2012, par la revue scientifique qui l'avait publiée. "Nous refusons le retrait de l'article", a affirmé le scientifique au cours d'une conférence de presse à Bruxelles. Le chercheur a dénoncé "des pressions insupportables" et souligné que l'éditeur de la revue Food and Chemical Toxicology (groupe Elsevier) n'avait relevé "ni fraude, ni mauvaise interprétation des données" dans son étude. "Les résultats présentés, s'ils ne sont pas incorrects, ne permettent pas de conclure", a estimé le responsable éditorial de Food and Chemical Toxicology dans un courrier adressé à Gilles-Éric Séralini, daté du 19 novembre. En conséquence, l'article a été retiré de la revue. "Nous maintenons nos conclusions", a répondu Gilles-Éric Séralini, dans une réponse adressée à la revue, dont un groupe de scientifiques avait évalué l'étude avant sa publication, conformément aux règles habituelles. Le scientifique a relié cette décision de retrait à "l'arrivée dans le comité éditorial de la revue de Richard Goodman, un biologiste qui a travaillé plusieurs années chez Monsanto".