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Posted: 27-04-2002 16:24 Post subject: Toxic Chicken Feed

According to the BBC chickens fed genetically modified maize in tests were twice as likely to die as the control group:

'During the tests, twice as many chickens died when fed on T-25 GM maize, compared with those fed on conventional maize.

This research was apparently overlooked [!] when the crop was given marketing approval in 1996....

T-25 GM Maize is being grown throughout the UK as part of the government's field crop trials and is intended to be used as cattle feed...

Dr Stephen Keston, a senior researcher at the department of veterinary sciences at Bristol Veterinary School, studied the initial tests.

He said they were "not really good enough to base a student project on, let alone a marketing consent for a GM product". '

'Cattle feed'? What, BSE wasn't enough? I also remember (can't think of the details) that there has already been a loss of human life due to a GM food/medical product in North America(?) What bugs me is that these trials are being driven by the desire to make money and not really to advance science. Mule crops, cereals that are 'dedicated' to one proprietary brand of herbicide, GM cornflour being added to foods without labelling and God knows what else we haven't been told about.

So far as I can see (and I admit that I'm not as well informed about this as I should be) the pace of scienctific progress and private business's capacity to exploit that progress are way outstripping both the ability of politicians to react in time and the legislative process's scope for timely response.

I am pro-science and not a Luddite so I don't believe in any of this 'put the genie back in the bottle' stuff. I think bioscience has a lot to offer to, for instance, farmers in the third world with crops that are more disease and drought resistant. At the same time, however, I also believe that genetic research must be open, transparent, strictly regulated and the benefits must be accessible to all who need them, not just those who can pay.