GM Maize Reduces Fertility & Deregulates Genes in Mice

Comprehensive long term studies commissioned by the Austrian government reveal that mice fed GM maize produced fewer and smaller litters with many genes affected compared to controls. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Austrian scientists carried out long term studies that showed GM maize fed to mice significantly reduced their fertility over three to four breeding cycles within one generation [1]. Similar effects were found in mice fed GM maize and bred over four generations; although the results did not reach statistical significance in any one generation, the trend was unmistakable, more pups lost and smaller litters in the GM-fed mice.

The studies are by far the most meticulous and comprehensive feeding trials to-date, and confirm deleterious reproductive and health impacts obtained by scientists independent of the biotech industry and farmers’ observations in the field. For a recent review, see [2] GM is Dangerous and Futile (SiS 40).

The new research results are a landmark in the safety assessment of GM food. Most feeding trials were short-term and restricted to a single generation or a single breeding cycle. The “multi-generational” study widely cited as evidence of no long term adverse impacts from GM feed is highly misleading as the experiment did not involve trans-generational feeding, but merely breeding mice that were not GM fed for three generations, and carrying out a separate experiment with GM feed for each generation [3] (Letter to Nature Biotechnology: Systematic bias in favour of no adverse impacts from GM feed, SiS 37). There were other serious flaws in that experiment, not least the failure to ascertain by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that the processed GM feed used actually contained GM soya.