A new study just came out that seems relevant: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize
From a press release:
The study involving 100 female rats and 100 male rats were split into groups and fed different amounts of either Roundup-resistant corn, Roundup herbicide or both, over two years. There was also a control group, which was fed regular corn a nd plain water.
Up to 50 per cent of males fed GM corn or Roundup and 70 per cent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 per cent and 20 per cent in the control group, the study found. And overall, rats fed GM corn or Roundup developed two to three times more tumours.
Full text of the study can be found here: http://xgmo.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/toxic-gmo-maize-roundup-final-paper.pdf
Thank you very much!
This looks as though Monstanto's GMO corn could be very dangerous, but I'm not really qualified to judge the study-- for example, what if the strain of rats is unusually vulnerable?
Edited to add: Yeah, tumor-prone rats, and since the 200 rats were divided into 10 groups, small sample sizes. Still, the effects were pretty large.
Orac: The study is nonsensical.
Would other people here care to take a look at that study?
Also, I'm still concerned that lifespan (or even multigenerational) studies are so rare.
I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food-- the arguments I've seen on the subject have been theoretical/aesthetic.
I'm interested in anything in the range from personal stories to scientific studies, but would prefer to avoid extremely general arguments or claims that people who prefer one or the other are demonstrating character defects.
Edited to add: Thanks for the replies. I'm hoping for experiments which test the effects of food produced in various ways on organisms, especially multi-cellular organisms. It was interesting to find out that plants which have to fight off insects for themselves have more mutagens.
The mutation experiment is very cute, but it leaves out the possibility of damage that isn't related to mutation-- for example, hormonal effects. Also, if it's done on a standard bacteria acquiring the ability to make a particular nutrient, this might not be a test for mutation in general.
I realize experiments on organic vs. conventional would be difficult, especially if you're tracking human health. It would be very hard to avoid confounding factors like other lifestyle factors and income.
"Conventional food" is actually a large blob of a concept-- different pesticides, fertilizers, etc. are used on different foods at different times, so finding out what people are actually exposed to would be difficult.