Evidence shows that shows there are significant wellness and environmental risks associated with the production and consumption of genetically modified (GM) foods, and a new study, published in the Journal of Organic Systems, has contributed to this growing body of research in a big way. US and Australian researchers have found a noteworthy difference between the wellbeing of pigs who were either fed a GM diet or a non-GM diet.
Led by Dr Judy Carman from the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Kensington Park, South Australia, the researchers fed 168 pigs either a non-GM diet, or a combination of GM soybeans and GM corn maize, for 22.7 weeks. The authors found that the GM diet – which contained three GM genes and therefore three GM proteins – significantly impaired the pigs’ reproductive and intestinal tracts and liver compared with those fed a non-GM diet.
The researchers chose a mixed diet instead of a single crop because this is usually what pigs and people eat, and they plumped for pigs because, believe it or not, they have a similar digestive system to you, and because some of the investigators had already looked into the reproductive and digestive problems in pigs fed GM crops. Some of these researchers had already noted, for example, that pigs fed a GM diet were less able to conceive and had higher rates of miscarriage. The average weight of the uterus in these pigs was 25% higher than the control pigs.
Also, the researchers had also previously found higher rates of intestinal problems in these GM-fed pigs. This included stomach and small intestine inflammation, stomach ulcers, a thinning of intestinal walls and an increase in haemorrhagic bowel disease. This last symptom is particularly nasty, as the pig can rapidly “bleed-out” from their bowel and die. In the new study – which didn’t allow for intestine exploration due to the amount of food in them – the researchers were able to look inside the stomach, and found a markedly higher level of severe inflammation in stomachs in pigs fed the GM diet. Pigs on the GM diet were 2.6 times more likely than control pigs to get severe stomach inflammation.
Comments are closed.