To test the GM potato,6 male rats were assigned to each diet category containing natural potato, natural potato with lectin added, and GM potato.They repeated the tests with raw, baked and boiled potatoes, and all rats were supplemented with vitamins and minerals to ensure their diets were complete and balanced.
Gm potatoes were shown to affect virtually every organ system of young rats, with most changes after just 10 days. The rats fed with the natural potato spiked with lectin, even at 700 times the concentration of lectin found in the gm potato,had health affects that barely approached those seen in the GM fed rats.They concluded that the disturbing health effects seen in the GM fed rats were the result of the genetic engineering process itself.This study raised serious concerns about all GM products on the market.

Agrononomist and Rob, you have denounced this study as fundamentally flawed, and mention a Royal Society of some sort that agrees. Can you tell me in what way this study was flawed?
Even though the research was abruptly halted and the scientists gagged after Pusztai appeared on a TV program warning of what he’d found, it remains the most in depth feeding study of GMOs ever published.

Merri Bee

Please go to my website and read the ESFA report on Animal Feeding Studies. The Putszai work was defficient in almost every aspect. As was the Italian mice study and the Austrain mice study.

If you would like to read how David Susuki misled the public please go to my website and read Transgenic Canola does not Threaten Insects.

Try this, go to the Organic Comsumers Association and count how many times they use their "Fear of GM" campaign to sell their produce. Or the Soil Association in the UK if you like Europe.

Cheers

As for the myth about suicides in India.

http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/dp/IFPRIDP00808.pdf

The facts are the Indian farmers are adopting Bt cotton as fast as possible.

Cheers

Merri bee, as far as I understand Elaine Ingham was never employed by Monsanto. http://www.soilfoodweb.com/03_about_us/dr_ingham_cv/education_positions.htm Perhaps you have some evidence I am unaware of?. Ingham distinguished herself at the NZ Royal Commission hearings by making false claims about the impact of GM organisms including citation of a paper of hers that didn’t exist. http://www.biotech-info.net/ingham_rebuttal.pdf Ingham had to apologise to the Commission.

I have mentioned at least twice on this thread why the Pusztai study was fundamentally flawed. The control diet of potatoes was damaging to the rats. The control potatoes caused just as many changes to the intestines of the rats as the GM potatoes. As the potatoes were causing so many changes, no conclusions can be drawn about the GM potatoes. The problem was that Pusztai did not recognise this. There were also some statistical flaws in the paper. Pusztai conducted a series of t-tests and concluded significant differences when the omnibus tests did not indicate a difference. In fact, in these studies the omnibus tests indicated GNA alone produced a significant difference in 3 out of 5 measures, boiling potatoes in 4 out of 5 measures and GM GNA potatoes in one out of 5 measures. The failure to include a control (no potato) diet in the study was unfortunate as it would have helped Pusztai see the effects of the potato diet. If Pusztai had found GNA to be harmless to rats over 7 years of research, the fact that this study found it to produce significant changes in 60% of gut measurements surely should have alerted him to there being something wrong with the study? According to the paper published in the Lancet, the concentration of GNA in the diet was the same for GM potatoes or non-GM potatoes supplemented with GNA.

It is certainly not the most in-depth study conducted. It used only 6 rats per group for 10 weeks and measured the effects on 5 intestinal properties.

As for the Indian suicide story, Rob has posted the most useful study. Farmer suicides have not increased in India since the introduction of BT cotton.

Agronomist

“As for the Indian suicide story, Rob has posted the most useful study. Farmer suicides have not increased in India since the introduction of BT cotton.”

Suicide amongst Indian farmers might be nothing new, but evidence clearly shows it is increasing at a particularly alarming rate in the big BT cotton regions.

The statistics in the IFPRI study that Rob linked to are well over two years old and don’t represent the current picture at all. Even in the decade up until 2006 though, the figures nonetheless showed more than a doubling of the suicide rate in the main BT cotton growing regions, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

Official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture today reveal that more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves each month in Maharashtra state and in Vidarbhah one farmer is killing himself every six hours.

As stated by on-the-ground environmental activist, Vandana Shiva, "The more recent escalation of suicides has been in the region of Vidarbhah and if you look at the data of expansion of BT cotton the highest expansion has taken place there."

"In Vidharbah, one farmer is killing himself every six hours and the separation of suicides from BT cotton is the worst lie because if you do a suicide map of this country and you do a BT sales map of this country - you have a one-to-one co-relation in terms of the districts," she maintains.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7785212.stm

The situation has become so dire that the Indian Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, is considering a ban on all GM seeds.

One state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.

“The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.”

http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=3541

So, yes, Rob, you can attempt to explain the GM cotton and farmer suicide connection away as a ‘myth’ if you like, even though the latest information clearly shows it is indeed very real. But you can’t explain away the fact that GM companies are ripping these poor farmers off big time.

Just because pro-GM activists claim GM is safe does not make it so. Just because they claim that anyone that proves it is not is discredited, does not make it so.
The public relations campaign is clearly directed to try to discredit anyone that speaks against GM, not to actually try to analyse and retest to ensure validity. (see Irvine's website)
This golden rice campaign is missing the reason why it is not approved.
Nothing to do with activism, everything to do with Monsanto.
As explained, it has not been approved because it involves multiple GM events rather than the single event that is approved by the regulatory body. Monsanto designed this single-event approval with the US government which was then adopted internationally.
Have a good new year.