This is getting ridiculous. More anti-gmo nonsense science showing the harmful effects of gmos. It’s called A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet.
I hesitate to link to the study because I don’t want to give them the traffic. I was also going to summarize factually why this study is so lame, but the biotech squints and other smart people were immediately on the case like ugly on Ronnie Cummins, totally discrediting it on every level. I have posted links to those dissections below.
But in a nutshell, the study claims that pigs fed gmo corn got sick. They had more stomach ulcers, or not.
Mark Lynas: GMO pigs study – more junk science
Farm and Food Care: Canadian experts convinced GMO swine feed study is deeply flawed
Cami Ryan: From ‘I smell a rat’ to ‘when pigs fly’, bad science makes its rounds
Random Rationality: Pigs, GMOs & Bullshit
Control Freaks: The evidence of GMO harm in pig study is pretty flimsy
GMOPundit: Pigs in the real world — feed them different diets, measure many health parameters, some will show differences– but what does it all mean?
Biofortified: Lack of care when choosing grains invalidates pig feeding study
I’m not being lazy, but I thought it would be silly to repeat what others have so expertly addressed. Besides, these are people whose sites you should bookmark.
What I want to talk about here is how I have never seen a so-called progressive movement so willing to distort, lie, and obfuscate to advance their cause. It’s repulsive and offensive. And it’s hard to repulse and offend me.
Anti-gmo activists are constantly painting Monsanto as evil. Well, we know corporations aren’t good citizens. But judging by the behavior of the anti-gmo activists and their in-house scientists, neither are they.
The study was funded by folks like… wait for it… Jeffrey Smith’s Living Room for Responsible Technology and the Organic Federation of Australia. yet the studies authors claim no conflicts? It’s been said elsewhere, but what if Monsanto had funded a study that showed no hazards?
The anti-gmo campaign brings dishonor to the progressive movement. Progressives have bought into crazy. Yeah, crazy.
The folks running the anti-gmo campaign are frauds, charlatans and freaks. I mean c’mon really. Alex Jones is on your side?
As soon as the latest study was released, anti-gmo groups like GM Watch warned of the “biotech industry” backlash against it. And by biotech industry, they mean any scientist that uses facts and evidence to point to the flaws in the study.
What I don’t get, as a non-scientist, is how scientists can keep their jobs when they do such blatantly do such bad work, on purpose? Tenure?
The sad thing is this bogus study will keep getting repeated ad nauseam on all the anti-gmo websites and I’ll have to listen to my anti-gmo friends cite it.
The anti-gmo movement is the Tea Party of the left, yet they have gained traction in the mainstream liberal/left/progressive thought about this issue.
Contrary to popular belief 
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I have followed your anti-GMO rant for some time now, and as one of the freaks you refer to here, I think the bottom line is just that we want our food labeled so we know what we are buying. Whether or not genetically modified food is good or bad may be part of the issue, as evidenced by recent rejections by foreign countries of genetically modified wheat shipments. Is it because they think it is bad for consumption? Or is it because they don’t know and want to be sure? Is this anti-GMO or anti-US? Don’t you want to know what is in the package you are buying to consume? Since when is the government the authority? Since we were brainwashed? As Frank Zappa said, “Remember there’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.”
Hey Paul. Is that really you? Check this out. The problem is the activists want what amounts to warning label. Check this out: How To Do GMO Food Labeling Right http://networkedblogs.com/MaYwe
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Yup, really me. I get your point on the labeling issue. So to me now the real issue is the trust we place in all these agencies, be they government or activist. Good to see both sides of the story.
Paul, drop a note to a few plant scientists in Europe. There are gobs of them. They know GM materials are safe and effective. It is the politics of fear. Non-scientific activist fear mongers scare a population (that has plenty of food and calories) to influence politicians and policy. The science and scientists back GM– and Europe is changing to accept this technology.
Activists here want fear to reign and shape unneeded bureaucracy and policy. Don’t desire to model our food policy after other countries- like those in the EU. Why? Because they got it wrong.
Plenty of other countries embrace and benefit from the technology. Romania used to. Bt potato stopped the Colorado beetle- big time- until 2007. After 2007 they went from exporter to importer and put millions of tons of insecticide into the environment. What changed?
They joined the EU.
I just went back to re-read a piece about “bullshit” that I remembered from a few years back. Mike The Mad Biologist talked about it in reference to creationists, but the game is the same:
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2009/04/20/the-asymmetry-of-bullsh-t-and/
The parallels make me weep on pretty much a daily basis. I miss the progressives. At one point I was part of that community and really liked them. But I can’t bring myself to align with them anymore. Alas.
Reblogged this on Rewinding Ariane's thread | Rembobinage du fil d'Ariane and commented:
This is a blog I just discovered thanks to my Twitter pals and I think it does a pretty good job at debunking “popular belief”, often conflated with so-called “common sense”, which is usually pure prejudice and easy stereotyping, when it isn’t outright nonsense. This post is about the latest pseudo-scientific scoop from anti-GMO activists in the form of another completely flawed study on animal consuming food made of genetically modified plants (GMP). As some of my friends stated, this so-called “long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet” mostly demonstrates that anti-GMO scientific activists mostly mistreat their laboratory animals. This post also shows that Monsanto isn’t the only “evil” out there on the GMO battle field. Their adversaries aren’t better! And this, of course, leave us pounder whether our interests are so much better defended by these people than by those they claim to oppose!
Science (good or bad, on either side) isn’t the central theme in the GMO battle – science is activist tactic employed by both Anti & Pro GMO activists. Like all battles, it’s a power struggle. Viewed from this perspective (science as tactic), promoting this or that study, however misleading it may seem, is rational if it works to sway “the minds of the masses”. “Rational” is a relative term that depends on perspective. And let’s face it, compared to way-in-the-future-plant science, current-plant-science is probably pretty superficial no matter who presents it.
So let’s compromise and put it to a vote. Label GMO food and let the people (imo, the rightful sovereign over technology and its regulation) decide; every time they buy food, people vote. Both sides will continue to sell their belief systems, but now the power lies with the people (all of us), not just the transnational chem/biotech industry.
If I were a scientist, the “will to power” and my belief system being what it is, I might decide that Technocracy is the ideal from of government – all decisions must be current-science-based. Naturally, others with opposing belief systems would disagree, and the battle between conceptual polarities begins. That’s life.
The GMO battle is a social struggle. Social struggles are, ultimately, power struggles. Resistance to GM tech will escalate until there is compromise, and the most promising compromise seems to be mandatory labeling for GMO foods. Except as tactic, the science is irrelevant – what’s relevant is the balance of power. Food is primal. When power over food and agriculture is effectively stolen from people, it does not go unnoticed for long. Struggle ensues. Since it doesn’t appear that either side will vanquish the other, let’s compromise (label it) and move on. Labeling won’t end the debate, but in that it will help restore the balance of power, it’s a big step in deflating the conflict.
Well, then, let’s fight for complete labeling of food, that is, including not only whether the seeds of the plants it is made of are genetically modified, but also with what kind of herbicide or pesticide they were sprinkled, what was the chemical composition of the water they were watered with and of the soil they grew in, and ultimately, the chemical composition of the plants themselves, because, heck, some of these molecules can be pretty unsafe for human health as well! But I wonder how large the packages for food-processed products will need to be in order to have enough space on the labels! And also, if people will be able to understand what’s on these labels. Most of them are already struggling with all the various symbols on them as well as the technical terms that are describing the contents of their products.
By the way, Californians just recently rejected a referendum launched by anti-GMO movements demanding that all GMO-based processed food be labeled to indicate that it contains anything genetically modified. Obviously, not everyone wants to be bothered with information that isn’t really relevant for their health or their taste.
Because the demand for labels indicating the presence of GMO in alimentary products isn’t about informing people on what they eat and helping them make a knowledgeable choice, but about confirming the irrational fears anti-GMO have been spreading since the first GM plants have been harvested. Once these labels have been imposed, it will act as an official recognition that GMO are (somewhat or totally) unsafe and that people should consume them only in very limited amount or even avoid them altogether. No matter what science says. Because for the last 20 years, out of the literally hundreds of studies that have checked for safety issues with GMO’s made available to consumption, NOT ONE has found any real hazards in them for human health! The couple of studies that claim they found problems, like the one reported in this blog post, have all been denounced for their methodological flaws and the conflict of interests that hampered their authors.
RoundUp does put the farmer’s health at risk and poses a threat to the environment if it isn’t used properly and according to expert advices, but so it goes for any chemical products in agriculture! Including all-“natural” non-synthetic chemical products!
What is at stake here isn’t human health, not even individual choice of consumption but science and whole industries. And the aim of the anti-GMO movements is to kill this particular branch of scientific investigation as well as the industries that emerged from the researches on trans-genetic processes, using misinformed masses of consumers. Well, it might work in Europe (very successfully, actually), much less in the US and not at all in Asia and other parts of world who are already ripping the advantages of this type of agriculture. This means that Europe will be simply left out of this really key-field and that North America could end up lagging way behind if anti-GMO fear-scaremonger keep progressing. It would be a really ridiculous scientific, economic and ecological loss, when our continents are faced with crisis on all these three fronts!
http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/african-groups-reject-g8-biotech-food-plan-as-colonialism/
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