I recall that the best study I saw, an expensive and difficult SIX-MONTH study of feeding pigs in a commercial piggery either one batch of feed from a GMO crop, or feed that was carefully traced to be from a somewhat similar but non-GMO crop.
Those who already knew that Frankenfood GMOs 'r gonna kill ya said the report proved horrible and deadly things. That might have been the headline that said "GMOS CAUSE LEUKEMIA!!!!!!!", because some white blood cells (leukocytes) were seen with unusual appearance.
On the other hand, those who were and always will be pro-GMO noted that the authors had to resort to new and detailed tests that they developed themselves (and were promoting) to even see any
irregularities at the cellular level, and detailed autopsies that are never done in any normal food-testing study to find some stomach irritation and enlarged uteruses (uteri?)
So the same study was used by partisans to conclude "GMOS CAUSE LEUKEMIA!!!!!!!" and "the most detailed studies anyone can afford found NO HARM and almost no detectable difference in feeding pigs GMOs for their entire lifetime, even inventing brand new tests in order to scrutinize the crops more rigorously than synthetic food dyes or preservatives.
I thought it was funny and maybe relevant that the GMO feed tested as having a little aflatoxin and some other fungal toxin. Maybe it was poor storage, maybe a fluke, maybe irrelevant. Or maybe the moldy contamination caused the stomach irritation and enlarged uteri.
Hilariously, the authors dismissed the presence of aflatoxins and other fungal toxins in the GMO feed as relevant to their study "since it was less than the federal standard for toxins in animal feed". I doubt that standard is much better than "this much aflatoxing won't make the pigs so sick that they will poison humans", yet it was diosmissed as irrelevant to a study that tried to discern differences 100 times more subtle!
To be fair to the researches, everything else they did was scrupulously and very rigorously fair - they controlled for everything up to and including weather, bedding and the phase of the moon. Probably they re-checked the feed at the end of the six month study and found the common levels of toxins in GMO feed but not the other feed ... what were they going to do, ask for all that money and time again to repeat the study? Or publish?
June issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Organic Systems
Lead researcher Judy Carman
the study itself:
http://www.organic-systems.org...
(You can download the PDF. It is 17 pages of dense scientific jargon. Great study.)
