GMW:_More_shoddy_science_in_GM_approval

[Guest guest]

GMW:_More_shoddy_science_in_GM_approval

" GM_WATCH "

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:06:51 +0100

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

-----

GM WATCH has often suggested that if the research used to justify the approval

for commercialisation of GM crops were disclosed, the entire case for such foods

would collapse. But because the data is withheld as commercially confidential,

the industry can forge ahead under a cloak of secrecy and hype.

 

A case in point is the " missing data " on Bayer's Chardon T25 maize, which was

recently given the go-ahead by the UK govt, only subsequently to be withdrawn by

Bayer. The govt claimed that an animal feeding study had been done on the maize,

but the study never appeared. This was in spite of determined attempts to obtain

the mystery data by campaigners such as Dr Brian John of GM free Cymru.

 

Now, the study, sponsored by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), has finally turned

up. In this article from the latest Science in Society mag, Dr Mae-Wan Ho tells

the incredible story of the data on T25. She reveals that:

 

1. The feeding study on T25 maize apparently used to justify its approval was

actually not on T25 maize at all, but on 2 quite different GM crops!!

 

2. The study concentrated on detecting GM DNA in milk, but not in mouth rumen,

intestinal contents, blood, meat or other tissues, where positive results have

already been reported. [Note that its findings may have been superseded by the

recent study leaked to Greenpeace, which found GM DNA in milk from cows fed GM

diets.]

 

3. The GM crops used in the study formed only a small proportion of the total

diet, decreasing the probability that GM-related changes would show up.

 

4. Only six cows were used in the study, three fed the GM diet and 3 the non-GM.

Note that trials revealing problems with GM foods (including Dr Pusztai's) have

been criticised by industry scientists for having too-small sample sizes when

they were bigger than this.

 

5. A weird study design seems to have been used, in which the groups of 3 cows

alternated between GM and non-GM diets. You don't need a PhD to realise that

this design is likely to smooth out any effects relating to GM foods.

 

6. Though all samples taken were carefully timed so it was known whether the

animal was on a GM or non-GM diet at the time, all samples from the same animal

were pooled together, thus losing valuable information regarding the length of

time the GM DNA would take to clear from the gut, to the tissues and out of the

body.

 

7. The method used for detecting GM DNA was not validated or standardised; its

sensitivity varied between different tissues. Thus massive numbers of copies of

the GM crop genomes would have had to be present to obtain a positive result.

This is why the study showed so many results that were neither positives nor

negatives, but " inconclusives " .

 

An important point is that the UK govt and the FSA would have been quite happy

to allow this maize to be grown and eaten by animals and people - it was the

company that voluntarily withdrew it, probably due to consumer resistance.

-------

Exposed: More shoddy science in GM maize approval

Dr Mae-Wan Ho explains how the Food Standards Agency appears to be selectively

promoting and suppressing research results in projects it funds.

Science in Society issue 22, Summer 2004

Subscriptions +44 (0)20 7383 3376

 

In the current issue of Science in Parliament, there are no less than three

mentions of horizontal gene transfer as a major uncertainty in the safety of GM

crops: in an article by Michael Meacher MP, " GM: the politics of uncertainty " ,

in a Parliamentary debate on biotechnology by Joan Ruddock, and in the article

" Nanotechnology: friend or foe? " by Prof. George Smith of Oxford University.

 

Horizontal gene transfer is the process whereby genetic material jumps into

foreign genomes, or put the other way round, whereby foreign genetic material

jumps into genomes. That is exactly what genetic modification involves:

artificially constructed DNA (called GM DNA or transpenic DNA) cobbled together

from a wide variety of sources or simply made in the laboratory, is inserted

into the genomes of plants, animals and livestock to make genetically modified

organisms (GMOs).

 

But horizontal gene transfer can also happen unintentionally and without our

knowledge. It is the main process for creating new viruses and bacteria that

cause disease epidemics and for spreading antibiotic and drug resistance among

the disease-causing agents, making the diseases more difficult to treat. Foreign

genes jumping into genomes in the genetic modification process, causes extensive

genetic damage, scrambling and rearranging genomes, resulting in inappropriate

gene expression that can trigger cancer.

 

There's lots of evidence that transgenic DNA may be more unstable and more

mobile than natural DNA, and molecular analyses of commercially approved GM

crops, carried out belatedly last year, found that practically all the inserts

have rearranged since characterised by the company.

 

One big question is: what happens to the transgenic DNA that's in GM food and

feed? I have raised this question on numerous occasions with our government over

the past ten years, one of the more recent occasions during the public hearing

on Chardon LL T25 transgenic maize organised by the Advisory Committee on

Releases to the Environment (ACRE) in 2002.

 

At the same hearing, it was revealed that twice as many broiler chickens died

eating GM maize as non-GM maize. But because the experimental design was so

flawed, statistical analysis failed to detect a significant difference between

the two groups. Prof. Orskov of the Macaulay Institute raised the issue of

whether milk from dairy cows was safe to drink, and spokespersons from Friends

of the Earth also pressed for feeding tests in the appropriate species - cattle

- instead of rats and broiler chickens.

 

ACRE's written response to the Chardon LL Hearing (December 2002) stated that

Bayer has commissioned a dairy cattle feeding study with T25 maize and would

present the data to the French competent authorities when completed. It added,

" As is the standard practice, ACRE will review new information generated in this

trial and update the risk assessment accordingly. "

 

Mystery of the missing study

 

But the result of this study has yet to see the light even though the GM maize

was approved in principle for commercial growing as cattle feed on 9 March 2004.

 

Dr. Brian John of GM-Free Cymru wrote to ACRE on 24 February, expressing his

concern that there are no published or peer-reviewed ruminant feeding studies on

the effects of T25 maize and asked to see the study mentioned by ACRE,

especially in view of the recent report that twelve dairy cows in Hesse, Germany

died after eating Syngenta's GM maize Bt 176 (see " Cows ate GM maize and died " ,

SiS 21). ACRE has not replied, despite a reminder sent on 5 March.

 

The study was supposed to have been done by Professor Richard Phipps in the

Centre for Dairy Research (CEDAR) at Reading University.

 

" There is no mention of the study on the CEDAR website. " Brian John said, " If

the Chardon LL used in the study came from the FSE trial sites, that would have

contravened the FSE rules, and a separate consent must have been signed by

somebody. "

 

Bayer was reportedly given a report of the study late in 2002, and one of the

researchers involved, David Beever, claimed the report had gone to ACRE.

 

On 9 March, Brian John finally received, via the Welsh Assembly, a " Background

Information " paper from Richard Phipps, stating that the study was conducted at

the University of Reading for Bayer Crop Science. The objective of the study was

to determine the effect of silage derived from T25 maize on feed intake and milk

production in lactating dairy cows compared with a near tisogenic' (genetically

identical) counterpart and silage of two further commercial maize hybrids. The

study has been completed and presented to the company, it said, and they are

preparing their data for publication in an international scientific journal once

the peer review process has been completed, the same process followed in the

study they conducted for the UK Food Standards Agency, published in the Journal

of Dairy Science, a copy of which was enclosed.

 

They then went on to state,

 

" While it is not our policy to release details of studies prior to peer review

we feel able to say that the compositional, fermentation characteristics and

nutritional values of all four silages were comparable and that there were no

significant differences in milk yield, milk composition and yield of milk

constituents, when comparing the four rations. In addition GM DNA was not

detected in any of the milk samples analysed by Polymerase Chain Reaction

methodology. Cows remained in good health throughout the study period. "

 

Notice that the study focussed on silage, not on maize grain, which is also

widely fed to cattle. It concentrated on detecting GM DNA in milk, but not in

the mouth, rumen or intestinal contents, blood, meat or other animal tissues,

where positive results have already been reported (see below).

 

The FSA-sponsored study is presumably the reason our government gave the

go-ahead for Chardon LL T25 maize to be grown for cattle feed (see " A happy

ending to GM maize farce " , this series), as the Bayer-commissioned T25 study has

yet to be published and there is a dearth of published studies on feeding

ruminants with GM feed. So, how does that study stand up to scrutiny?

 

Study that found no results worth reporting is worthless

 

The study failed to find significant survival of GM DNA, or indeed any single

copy DNA in most of the tissue and tissue contents examined; but it is deeply

flawed.

 

First of all, the FSA-sponsored study has nothing to do with Chardon LL maize.

It was work done with a mixture of both Monsanto's Roundup Ready soya GTS 40-3-2

(as soya meal) and Mon 810 maize (as maize grain) at the same time, comprising

only 13% and 18.5% respectively of the total diet. This inevitably decreases the

chance of detecting the GM DNA belonging to the varieties.

 

Second, only six cows were used, three fed the GM diet and the others non-GM.

But a peculiar " single reversal design with three 4-wk periods " was used, which

I believe, meant that the groups of three cows alternated between GM and non-GM

diets. Thus one group would spend the first four weeks on GM, the next four

weeks on non-GM and then four weeks back on GM; while the feeding regime for the

other group would be non-GM, GM, and non-GM. This design generates 9 data points

each for the GM diet and non-GM diet. But, it also guarantees to balance out the

effects of GM versus non-GM diets and hence is utterly worthless as far as

detecting difference in weight gain or any other developmental or physiological

indicators between the diets.

 

Third, the researchers made a big blunder. Two of the cows in the non-GM group

were inadvertently fed on the GM-diet, so they ended up with 13 data points in

the GM diet group and only 5 data points in the control non-GM diet group.

 

Fourth, even though they had taken apparently carefully timed samples from

individual animals in each four week period, they pooled all the samples from

the same animal together, thus losing potentially valuable information regarding

the time course of the clearing of GM DNA from the gut to the tissues and out of

the body.

 

Fifth, and most serious of all, their PCR method for detecting GM DNA is neither

validated nor standardized. Its sensitivity varied over 1000 fold between

different tissues and tissue contents. The limits of detection is such that in

some samples, I calculate that more than 40000 copies of the soya genome or 9000

copies of the maize genome must be present in the sample before a positive

result is obtained. The usual detection limit of PCR is 10 copies or less. Thus,

given the minute amounts of a sample used in a PCR test, as for example, 0.3

millilitres of milk, it is no wonder that the only DNA that can be detected at

all reliably is the chloroplast gene, which outnumbers single copy transgenes by

a factor of 10000 copies per plant cell to one. No wonder there is a rather

large number of neither positives nor negatives, but " inconclusives " in the

data.

 

Poor PCR amplification is one of the most common causes of failing to detect GM

DNA

 

The " Background Information " on the study on Chardon LL claims that their as yet

unpublished results " support the 30 other peer-reviewed papers in international

scientific journals, which have failed to detect GM DNA in milk, meat and eggs

derived from animals fed diets containing GM feeds. "

 

In fact, poor PCR amplification is probably one of the most common causes of

having " failed to detect GM DNA " . A Japanese research team, which has documented

the survival of both GM DNA and Bt toxin protein in the digestive tract of mice,

pigs and cattle, nevertheless reported a failure to detect GM DNA in blood

because as they stated, the PCR did not work in blood. There are many unknown

PCR inhibitors in different tissues that can give false negatives. Phipps and

coworkers also failed to detect singlecopy DNA in blood, GM or otherwise, and

they failed to detect even the abundant chloroplast gene in the vast majority of

samples.

 

One recent study documenting the survival of GM DNA in the mouth and rumen of

sheep was also funded by the Food Standards Agency. This research group from

Leeds University found that DNA fragments containing the entire coding region of

the synthetic cry1Ab gene was still detected from rumen fluid 5 hours after

feeding maize grains, though not from rumen fluid sampled from sheep fed silage

prepared from the GM maize line. But PCR detected a shorter (211-bp) sequence in

rumen fluid up to 3 and 24 h after feeding silage and maize grains,

respectively.

 

It is clear that GM DNA especially in maize grains persists, and " may,

therefore, provide a source of transforming DNA in the rumen " .

 

But the authors are wrong to claim that the 211-bp sequence is " very unlikely to

transmit genetic information " . For such sequences could be promoters or

enhancers containing numerous binding motifs for transcription factors, and

capable of boosting the expression of genes inappropriately.

 

The researchers also found that plasmid DNA introduced into the mouth of sheep

and extracted from saliva sampled after 8 minutes was still capable of

transforming Escherichia coli bacteria to kanamycin resistance, " implying that

DNA released from the diet within the mouth may retain sufficient biological

activity for the transformation of competent oral bacteria " .

 

They conclude: " The use of GM crops harbouring antibiotic resistance genes, in

particular the use of unprocessed grains in animal feed, possibly deserves

further evaluation. "

 

A great deal of uncertainty remains over the fate of GM DNA. Further research

must be carried out with properly validated quantitative PCR methods.

 

ISIS has discovered that information on research suggesting the survival of GM

DNA and horizontal gene transfer in food and feed is not easily located on the

FSA website, although the FSA has clearly funded the research (the research

grant for the sheep work in Leeds University is G01010). The FSA website does

have information on the research they fund (there is a Research Project List for

its Safety of Novel Foods Research Programme), some with the papers themselves,

others with just short information on the projects; this is available for G01

007-G01021, with the exception of G01010 and G01014. A search of the FSA website

with the term 'G01010' eventually turned up some information on the project,

although not the papers arising from the research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

If these people had studied *ROCKET* science in earlier years, wonder where

we'd be today?! NG

-

" Frank " <califpacific

<alternative_medicine_forum >

Monday, June 28, 2004 2:07 PM

 

GMW:_More_shoddy_science_in_GM_approval

 

 

>

>

> GMW:_More_shoddy_science_in_GM_approval

> " GM_WATCH "

> Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:06:51 +0100

>

> GM WATCH daily

> http://www.gmwatch.org

> -----

> GM WATCH has often suggested that if the research used to justify the

approval for commercialisation of GM crops were disclosed, the entire case

for such foods would collapse. But because the data is withheld as

commercially confidential, the industry can forge ahead under a cloak of

secrecy and hype.

>

> A case in point is the " missing data " on Bayer's Chardon T25 maize, which

was recently given the go-ahead by the UK govt, only subsequently to be

withdrawn by Bayer. The govt claimed that an animal feeding study had been

done on the maize, but the study never appeared. This was in spite of

determined attempts to obtain the mystery data by campaigners such as Dr

Brian John of GM free Cymru.

>

> Now, the study, sponsored by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), has finally

turned up. In this article from the latest Science in Society mag, Dr

Mae-Wan Ho tells the incredible story of the data on T25. She reveals that:

>

> 1. The feeding study on T25 maize apparently used to justify its approval

was actually not on T25 maize at all, but on 2 quite different GM crops!!

>

> 2. The study concentrated on detecting GM DNA in milk, but not in mouth

rumen, intestinal contents, blood, meat or other tissues, where positive

results have already been reported. [Note that its findings may have been

superseded by the recent study leaked to Greenpeace, which found GM DNA in

milk from cows fed GM diets.]

>

> 3. The GM crops used in the study formed only a small proportion of the

total diet, decreasing the probability that GM-related changes would show

up.

>

> 4. Only six cows were used in the study, three fed the GM diet and 3 the

non-GM. Note that trials revealing problems with GM foods (including Dr

Pusztai's) have been criticised by industry scientists for having too-small

sample sizes when they were bigger than this.

>

> 5. A weird study design seems to have been used, in which the groups of 3

cows alternated between GM and non-GM diets. You don't need a PhD to realise

that this design is likely to smooth out any effects relating to GM foods.

>

> 6. Though all samples taken were carefully timed so it was known whether

the animal was on a GM or non-GM diet at the time, all samples from the same

animal were pooled together, thus losing valuable information regarding the

length of time the GM DNA would take to clear from the gut, to the tissues

and out of the body.

>

> 7. The method used for detecting GM DNA was not validated or standardised;

its sensitivity varied between different tissues. Thus massive numbers of

copies of the GM crop genomes would have had to be present to obtain a

positive result. This is why the study showed so many results that were

neither positives nor negatives, but " inconclusives " .

>

> An important point is that the UK govt and the FSA would have been quite

happy to allow this maize to be grown and eaten by animals and people - it

was the company that voluntarily withdrew it, probably due to consumer

resistance.

> -------

> Exposed: More shoddy science in GM maize approval

> Dr Mae-Wan Ho explains how the Food Standards Agency appears to be

selectively promoting and suppressing research results in projects it funds.

> Science in Society issue 22, Summer 2004

> Subscriptions +44 (0)20 7383 3376

>

> In the current issue of Science in Parliament, there are no less than

three mentions of horizontal gene transfer as a major uncertainty in the

safety of GM crops: in an article by Michael Meacher MP, " GM: the politics

of uncertainty " , in a Parliamentary debate on biotechnology by Joan Ruddock,

and in the article " Nanotechnology: friend or foe? " by Prof. George Smith of

Oxford University.

>

> Horizontal gene transfer is the process whereby genetic material jumps

into foreign genomes, or put the other way round, whereby foreign genetic

material jumps into genomes. That is exactly what genetic modification

involves: artificially constructed DNA (called GM DNA or transpenic DNA)

cobbled together from a wide variety of sources or simply made in the

laboratory, is inserted into the genomes of plants, animals and livestock to

make genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

>

> But horizontal gene transfer can also happen unintentionally and without

our knowledge. It is the main process for creating new viruses and bacteria

that cause disease epidemics and for spreading antibiotic and drug

resistance among the disease-causing agents, making the diseases more

difficult to treat. Foreign genes jumping into genomes in the genetic

modification process, causes extensive genetic damage, scrambling and

rearranging genomes, resulting in inappropriate gene expression that can

trigger cancer.

>

> There's lots of evidence that transgenic DNA may be more unstable and more

mobile than natural DNA, and molecular analyses of commercially approved GM

crops, carried out belatedly last year, found that practically all the

inserts have rearranged since characterised by the company.

>

> One big question is: what happens to the transgenic DNA that's in GM food

and feed? I have raised this question on numerous occasions with our

government over the past ten years, one of the more recent occasions during

the public hearing on Chardon LL T25 transgenic maize organised by the

Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) in 2002.

>

> At the same hearing, it was revealed that twice as many broiler chickens

died eating GM maize as non-GM maize. But because the experimental design

was so flawed, statistical analysis failed to detect a significant

difference between the two groups. Prof. Orskov of the Macaulay Institute

raised the issue of whether milk from dairy cows was safe to drink, and

spokespersons from Friends of the Earth also pressed for feeding tests in

the appropriate species - cattle - instead of rats and broiler chickens.

>

> ACRE's written response to the Chardon LL Hearing (December 2002) stated

that Bayer has commissioned a dairy cattle feeding study with T25 maize and

would present the data to the French competent authorities when completed.

It added, " As is the standard practice, ACRE will review new information

generated in this trial and update the risk assessment accordingly. "

>

> Mystery of the missing study

>

> But the result of this study has yet to see the light even though the GM

maize was approved in principle for commercial growing as cattle feed on 9

March 2004.

>

> Dr. Brian John of GM-Free Cymru wrote to ACRE on 24 February, expressing

his concern that there are no published or peer-reviewed ruminant feeding

studies on the effects of T25 maize and asked to see the study mentioned by

ACRE, especially in view of the recent report that twelve dairy cows in

Hesse, Germany died after eating Syngenta's GM maize Bt 176 (see " Cows ate

GM maize and died " , SiS 21). ACRE has not replied, despite a reminder sent

on 5 March.

>

> The study was supposed to have been done by Professor Richard Phipps in

the Centre for Dairy Research (CEDAR) at Reading University.

>

> " There is no mention of the study on the CEDAR website. " Brian John said,

" If the Chardon LL used in the study came from the FSE trial sites, that

would have contravened the FSE rules, and a separate consent must have been

signed by somebody. "

>

> Bayer was reportedly given a report of the study late in 2002, and one of

the researchers involved, David Beever, claimed the report had gone to ACRE.

>

> On 9 March, Brian John finally received, via the Welsh Assembly, a

" Background Information " paper from Richard Phipps, stating that the study

was conducted at the University of Reading for Bayer Crop Science. The

objective of the study was to determine the effect of silage derived from

T25 maize on feed intake and milk production in lactating dairy cows

compared with a near tisogenic' (genetically identical) counterpart and

silage of two further commercial maize hybrids. The study has been completed

and presented to the company, it said, and they are preparing their data for

publication in an international scientific journal once the peer review

process has been completed, the same process followed in the study they

conducted for the UK Food Standards Agency, published in the Journal of

Dairy Science, a copy of which was enclosed.

>

> They then went on to state,

>

> " While it is not our policy to release details of studies prior to peer

review we feel able to say that the compositional, fermentation

characteristics and nutritional values of all four silages were comparable

and that there were no significant differences in milk yield, milk

composition and yield of milk constituents, when comparing the four rations.

In addition GM DNA was not detected in any of the milk samples analysed by

Polymerase Chain Reaction methodology. Cows remained in good health

throughout the study period. "

>

> Notice that the study focussed on silage, not on maize grain, which is

also widely fed to cattle. It concentrated on detecting GM DNA in milk, but

not in the mouth, rumen or intestinal contents, blood, meat or other animal

tissues, where positive results have already been reported (see below).

>

> The FSA-sponsored study is presumably the reason our government gave the

go-ahead for Chardon LL T25 maize to be grown for cattle feed (see " A happy

ending to GM maize farce " , this series), as the Bayer-commissioned T25 study

has yet to be published and there is a dearth of published studies on

feeding ruminants with GM feed. So, how does that study stand up to

scrutiny?

>

> Study that found no results worth reporting is worthless

>

> The study failed to find significant survival of GM DNA, or indeed any

single copy DNA in most of the tissue and tissue contents examined; but it

is deeply flawed.

>

> First of all, the FSA-sponsored study has nothing to do with Chardon LL

maize. It was work done with a mixture of both Monsanto's Roundup Ready soya

GTS 40-3-2 (as soya meal) and Mon 810 maize (as maize grain) at the same

time, comprising only 13% and 18.5% respectively of the total diet. This

inevitably decreases the chance of detecting the GM DNA belonging to the

varieties.

>

> Second, only six cows were used, three fed the GM diet and the others

non-GM. But a peculiar " single reversal design with three 4-wk periods " was

used, which I believe, meant that the groups of three cows alternated

between GM and non-GM diets. Thus one group would spend the first four weeks

on GM, the next four weeks on non-GM and then four weeks back on GM; while

the feeding regime for the other group would be non-GM, GM, and non-GM. This

design generates 9 data points each for the GM diet and non-GM diet. But, it

also guarantees to balance out the effects of GM versus non-GM diets and

hence is utterly worthless as far as detecting difference in weight gain or

any other developmental or physiological indicators between the diets.

>

> Third, the researchers made a big blunder. Two of the cows in the non-GM

group were inadvertently fed on the GM-diet, so they ended up with 13 data

points in the GM diet group and only 5 data points in the control non-GM

diet group.

>

> Fourth, even though they had taken apparently carefully timed samples from

individual animals in each four week period, they pooled all the samples

from the same animal together, thus losing potentially valuable information

regarding the time course of the clearing of GM DNA from the gut to the

tissues and out of the body.

>

> Fifth, and most serious of all, their PCR method for detecting GM DNA is

neither validated nor standardized. Its sensitivity varied over 1000 fold

between different tissues and tissue contents. The limits of detection is

such that in some samples, I calculate that more than 40000 copies of the

soya genome or 9000 copies of the maize genome must be present in the sample

before a positive result is obtained. The usual detection limit of PCR is 10

copies or less. Thus, given the minute amounts of a sample used in a PCR

test, as for example, 0.3 millilitres of milk, it is no wonder that the only

DNA that can be detected at all reliably is the chloroplast gene, which

outnumbers single copy transgenes by a factor of 10000 copies per plant cell

to one. No wonder there is a rather large number of neither positives nor

negatives, but " inconclusives " in the data.

>

> Poor PCR amplification is one of the most common causes of failing to

detect GM DNA

>

> The " Background Information " on the study on Chardon LL claims that their

as yet unpublished results " support the 30 other peer-reviewed papers in

international scientific journals, which have failed to detect GM DNA in

milk, meat and eggs derived from animals fed diets containing GM feeds. "

>

> In fact, poor PCR amplification is probably one of the most common causes

of having " failed to detect GM DNA " . A Japanese research team, which has

documented the survival of both GM DNA and Bt toxin protein in the digestive

tract of mice, pigs and cattle, nevertheless reported a failure to detect GM

DNA in blood because as they stated, the PCR did not work in blood. There

are many unknown PCR inhibitors in different tissues that can give false

negatives. Phipps and coworkers also failed to detect singlecopy DNA in

blood, GM or otherwise, and they failed to detect even the abundant

chloroplast gene in the vast majority of samples.

>

> One recent study documenting the survival of GM DNA in the mouth and rumen

of sheep was also funded by the Food Standards Agency. This research group

from Leeds University found that DNA fragments containing the entire coding

region of the synthetic cry1Ab gene was still detected from rumen fluid 5

hours after feeding maize grains, though not from rumen fluid sampled from

sheep fed silage prepared from the GM maize line. But PCR detected a shorter

(211-bp) sequence in rumen fluid up to 3 and 24 h after feeding silage and

maize grains, respectively.

>

> It is clear that GM DNA especially in maize grains persists, and " may,

therefore, provide a source of transforming DNA in the rumen " .

>

> But the authors are wrong to claim that the 211-bp sequence is " very

unlikely to transmit genetic information " . For such sequences could be

promoters or enhancers containing numerous binding motifs for transcription

factors, and capable of boosting the expression of genes inappropriately.

>

> The researchers also found that plasmid DNA introduced into the mouth of

sheep and extracted from saliva sampled after 8 minutes was still capable of

transforming Escherichia coli bacteria to kanamycin resistance, " implying

that DNA released from the diet within the mouth may retain sufficient

biological activity for the transformation of competent oral bacteria " .

>

> They conclude: " The use of GM crops harbouring antibiotic resistance

genes, in particular the use of unprocessed grains in animal feed, possibly

deserves further evaluation. "

>

> A great deal of uncertainty remains over the fate of GM DNA. Further

research must be carried out with properly validated quantitative PCR

methods.

>

> ISIS has discovered that information on research suggesting the survival

of GM DNA and horizontal gene transfer in food and feed is not easily

located on the FSA website, although the FSA has clearly funded the research

(the research grant for the sheep work in Leeds University is G01010). The

FSA website does have information on the research they fund (there is a

Research Project List for its Safety of Novel Foods Research Programme),

some with the papers themselves, others with just short information on the

projects; this is available for G01 007-G01021, with the exception of G01010

and G01014. A search of the FSA website with the term 'G01010' eventually

turned up some information on the project, although not the papers arising

from the research.