Kids from GM soy fed goats stunted.

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Kids from GM soy fed goats stunted.

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Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 15 12:53 pm Post subject: Kids from GM soy fed goats stunted.

GMO soy produces altered milk and stunted kids.

Quote:

Mother goats fed on 'Roundup-ready' GMO soy produce milk that's much lower in fat, protein and antibodies than non-GMO controls, writes Jonathan Latham, and contains traces of GE DNA. The milk also stunts their kids' growth.

Quote:

Differences in the colostrum between the mothers fed the GE soy and the non-GE soy were particularly striking. The colostrum from the GE-fed mothers contained only 2/3 of the fat, 1/3 of the protein and close to half of the IgG antibodies.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6612
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 15 5:41 pm Post subject:
No time to look further in depth right now, but will be curious to do so. Here's the article in question: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921448815000528

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 15 8:39 am Post subject:
What pi**es me off the most is if this was a drug the testing would be a lot more stringent & these 'side effects' would have to be noted. 'WARNING can effect the milk quality of breast milk'. Should not be taken by nursing mothers would be a given. But because it's 'food' we have to wait thirty years for science to catch up! Coming to a supermarket near you if TTIP goes through.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6612
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Fri Nov 06, 15 2:06 am Post subject:

The traces of GE DNA are less surprising when you note that

Quote:

The primer pairs were selected from those reported in the literature ( Jennings et al., 2003), with the aim of obtaining short amplicons (118 bp), compatible with highly fragmented DNA samples

and that they found more traces of chloroplast and other endogenous plant DNA than they did of the GE DNA. So the bigger news is that colostrum carries along DNA fragments from ingested feed. The pieces were "highly fragmented" and that is very much not equal to intact genes.

Even if intact genes are going through, it's another big leap to suggest that the kid's cells are going to take them up and do anything with them. (not saying it's impossible, but for gene therapy to work for example a vector has to actually insert the desired gene into an animal's existing DNA, within a cell. That's a few steps removed from DNA fragments floating around in blood and milk)

The striking difference in the paper is the change in milk fat and protein content. There's no ready explanation for that (even if you're blaming the GM technology - that still doesn't answer "How?"). The paper was a little ambiguous about the soybean meal used

Quote:

...soybean meal (13% or 20% of concentrate DM) which was from conventional or GM (MON40-3-2) soybean....

Clearly "MON40-3-2" is the roundup ready soy they used, but what was the conventional? Was it a non GE version of the same soybean variety? If not, that's a big experimental screw-up because the drastic differences we see could be from soybean varietal differences and not the presence or absence of GE technology.

EDIT: There's also no mention of how the two soybean varieties were grown. Was roundup actually used on either? etc.... For a study so entirely dependendent up on the goats' diet, their table showing its chemical composition is pretty lacking. (more of just an assumption that all things were equal)

They only said that 10 goats for each group were divided up. They don't say if the 10 goats were paired in relation to their baseline performance. (e.g., a goat that has kidded several times before will produce more and better milk than a goat kidding for the first time, if they behave anything like dairy cows). There's nothing here to say that those goats wouldn't have produced that lower quality milk anyway.

Okay, so that's my critical take on it. If they did everything right experimentally, than these findings will make big news and lead to more investigation for sure. Did they find what they think they found?

dan1

Joined: 23 Jun 2010
Posts: 102
Location: Bristolish

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 15 3:35 pm Post subject:

good critique, Slim
It doesnt mention whether goats were randomly allocated or paired to the experimental; and control groups. There's no mention of blinding and the numbers are small.
It also, as you say, leaves out the critical factor of composition of the feeds.
The GM feed may (possibly for other reasons than being GM be less nutritious) and without this information it's wrong to imply that the "GM-ness" is the causative factor in the growth differences.
The scientific commentators quoted are also from acknowledged GM sceptic groups

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 15 6:43 pm Post subject:
Wotcha Dan, where've you been?

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46246
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 15 10:50 am Post subject:
the use or not of roundup is important to establish cause but if the milk analysis is correct either the gm strain of fodder and /or the roundup makes it a bad idea to use it as goat food and suggests other gm/chem crops should be checked very carefully.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6612
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 15 11:20 am Post subject:

dpack wrote:

the use or not of roundup is important to establish cause but if the milk analysis is correct either the gm strain of fodder and /or the roundup makes it a bad idea to use it as goat food and suggests other gm/chem crops should be checked very carefully.

It certainly warrants further investigation, but that study didn't do enough to control the potential sources of variation in the milk analysis. You can't attribute it to the feed, without them providing a lot more details about their study.

bagpuss

Joined: 09 Dec 2004
Posts: 10507
Location: cambridge

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 15 2:25 pm Post subject:
In case anyone wants to read the actual study Click to download file

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46246
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 15 2:57 pm Post subject:
thanks that was interesting. on a first read the method seems ok and the study was not intended to answer the questions the results pose. my primary question is roundup the factor rather than genes to resist roundup. spose trying it with gm soya with or without roundup and perhaps with "normal"soya with and without condiment as well might answer that or indicate it is something else.

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