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Sharing of genetically modified corn in Shanxi and Jilin due to animal abnormality.
[Introduction] Mice disappear, sows love to live and die, dogs have water in their bellies, and sheep are abnormal. The pig industry in many villages, a well-known pig distribution center in China, has become depressed. Almost all of these abnormal animals have eaten the same kind of corn-Xianyu 335.
Can Xianyu 335 corn (right) be the main cause of animal abnormality?
This is a group of reports that we can't give a clear source, because animal anomalies such as mouse disappearance, sow's love for life and death, and dog's stomach with water have existed for some time. Local farmers will be worried and may even give up aquaculture, and even regard it as a joke. They are used to this anomaly, but we can't turn a blind eye.
In China and even the whole world, there is a fierce struggle between opponents and supporters of genetic modification, and the debate about science, interests, health and destruction ... Genetic modification has intensified around these keywords. We have no intention to intervene, but when all kinds of animals are abnormal, transgenic suddenly becomes an unavoidable topic. Perhaps, arguing and finding anomalies is not a bad thing. It can warn mankind that those unknown and uncertain risks are actually close at hand.
The mouse is gone.
—— Investigation on animal anomalies in Shanxi and Jilin.
According to American patent records, the category number of the male parent PH4CV of maize seed "Xianyu 335" planted in China indicates that it is a genetically modified crop. "If this is the case, the abnormal reactions of various animals in Shanxi, Jilin and other places will have a more reasonable explanation."
Liu Min (a pseudonym), a farmer in Shaanxi province who suffered from rats, is now uneasy about the extinction of local rats.
Liu Min is a farmer in Zhang Qingxiang, Jinzhong, Shanxi. He planted 10 acre of corn at home. "In the past, mice at home often ran up and down and needed to buy highly toxic rat poison. Since three years ago, I suddenly found that even without rat poison, there are very few mice eating at home. " Liu Min said.
Therefore, Liu Min began to observe the situation of rats in the village. He ran to ask the grain grinder, who grinds all kinds of miscellaneous grains. He said there were no big rats (rats with a body length and tail exceeding 10 cm). He also asked the corn seller that there were no big rats in his corn hill. Occasionally, he only saw the little mouse, which didn't cause much food loss.
The disappearing big mouse
After investigating this village with more than 300 families, Liu Min learned the same thing: rats are basically extinct, with only a few rats. Liu Min also found that even the mice were slow and seemed unable to tell the direction. "I have seen dogs catch these little mice easily." .
To confirm his guess, Liu Min went to a village within 50 miles nearby to learn about the rats. Many villagers report that there are indeed fewer mice, but it is not surprising that they think it is a natural disaster or a cat.
In the village of Liu Min, there are more than 20 large grain harvesters, some of whom are friends and classmates of Liu Min. Liu Min told them to ask the local mice when collecting grain. The feedback from these big grain collectors to Liu Min is that they have traveled all over the villages in Fiona Fang 100 mile to collect grain, and many villagers have reflected similar situations to those in Zhang Qingxiang.
In May this year, our reporter visited eight villages in Jinzhong, further confirming what Liu Min said about animal anomalies. Villagers such as Huairen Village, Wang Hao Village and Yangcun Village all confirmed that "there are fewer mice".
"Now there are very few big mice, only some small mice," said Zhang, a big grain grower in Yangcun. "In the past, after a mouse trampled a dead one, half of its tail was left outside, but now it's never seen again."
Huairen Village is called the first vinegar village in China. The reporter interviewed several villagers, and they all said that the corn stored in vinegar is rarely eaten by mice. Not only are there fewer mice, but there are no people selling rat poison now.
Lao Zhang, a corn buyer in Shouyang and Jinzhong, told reporters that in recent years, he also found that there are fewer and fewer rats in Pingchuan, Jinzhong, especially there are no big rats.
"If there are many cats, there used to be cats, saying that cats caught all the mice. Why only catch big mice?" This puzzled Liu Min.
Zhang, a villager in Wang Hao Village, has a similar question: "If there are many cats, there used to be many cats in our village."
Yu He, who lives far away in Sujia Village, Xiushui Town, yushu city, Jilin Province, has the same confusion. He found that in the last three years, the mice in the crops suddenly disappeared. "In the past, those mice were all gnawing corn cobs and putting a lot of rat poison. Now there is no need to put rat poison at all."
In his memory, the rows of rat holes on the ridge used to give him a headache. Now the rat hole has disappeared. During the autumn harvest, the corn eaten by the villagers was piled in the field, and no mice came to eat it.
"This is really different from before." Yu said.
When chatting, villagers often mention the mice that have disappeared in the fields, but they are only joking at most. Besides, there are no mice in the field, which the villagers think is a good thing, at least there is no need to put rat poison. However, there are still some mice in the villagers' home, but according to Yu, the mice at home have become strange now. "In the past, the mouse dragged the corn into the hole to eat, but now it seems to be stupid and sitting on the grain pile to eat. I have seen it several times with my own eyes. "
For the reason of the decrease in the number of rats, villager Chen Taopei thinks it is because of rat poison. He remembered that three or four years ago, yushu city had put medicine in the field, and another reason was that rats had more natural enemies, such as weasels and eagles.
However, he is still a little confused. There used to be natural enemies of mice. Why were there so many mice at that time? "There is at least one reason. Rats can't die completely. I think it may be the cause of changes in the ecological environment. "
However, many villagers said that there were no factors affecting the ecological environment around the village in recent years. Except for two brick factories built around the village, no other enterprises were built, and no wastewater pollutants were discharged.
The pig's stomach is full of water.
From May to August, the reporter visited the rural areas near Jinzhong and Yushu many times to investigate the situation of fewer mice, but found another strange thing in the local area: sows gave birth less, infertility, fake births and more abortions.
Zhang has been raising pigs for almost ten years. He said that in the past, more than 20 sows in his family could produce at most 16 pigs, and never less than 10 pigs. That is, four years ago, he found that sows gave birth to fewer and fewer piglets.
"Sometimes there are only six or seven pigs. In short, there are no 10 piglets in these two years. " He also reported that his family raised dozens of fat pigs at the same time, and the growth rate was obviously slower than in previous years. In recent years, he has been losing money in raising pigs and selling more than a dozen sows. "I won't keep the rest of the pigs after I sell them." Zhang said to him.
Chen Hongjun, a pig farmer in Sujia Village, encountered a similar situation. In the last three years, there have been many stillbirths and miscarriages, which made him lose at least13 piglets.
At first, he thought that the timing of breeding was not good, but it still did not help to increase the number of breeding. "I have more than ten years of farming experience and have done this before." Veterinarians can't answer his doubts, let alone cure his pigs. "The local epidemic prevention station is just a glimpse, without any reason."
Chen Hongjun asked many individual farmers in the village, and they all encountered similar situations.
"Now the birth rate of pigs is not high, but extremely low." Wang is a professional pig farmer in Jinzhong village. He is at a loss about his pig-raising experience in the past two years. He said that strange things about pigs often happened in the past two years, and even veterinarians didn't know what was going on. "There were four such sows in our family last year. Three days before giving birth, they gasped and groaned. Finally, the pig died before it was born. "
There are also some born piglets that look healthy, but they died before Tayo was born. Last year, there were dozens of such dead pigs, which dealt a great blow to Wang's pig farm. This year, this situation has not improved: in March, a sow was born, all stillborn; On April 2, two sows gave birth to two litters of piglets, a total of 22. Now there are only eight piglets left, and all the others are dead.
Wang said: "There are too many losses in raising pigs now. I have been raising pigs for more than ten years, and these situations have only appeared in recent years. There will be stillbirths in the past, but there really won't be such a high proportion. "
Another pig farmer in Yanwu Village said that he once sold a sow to a slaughterhouse, and the people in the slaughterhouse told him that the ovaries of pigs were full of water.
Zuo Jinyu, a villager in Zhukezhang village, also encountered this situation. He said that after the pig of a family died, he wanted to see what caused it, so he dissected it and was surprised to find that the pig's stomach was full of water. Zuo Jinyu also suffered heavy losses due to the problem of dead pigs last year. "Some piglets died in the bellies of sows. More than 60 piglets grew to more than 50 kilograms and died inexplicably, losing me more than 60,000 yuan. " Zuo Jinyu has been raising pigs for 0/3 years, and the problems of pigs are mainly concentrated in these years.
The decline of pig village
Gong Peng Town, located in the northwest of yushu city, Jilin Province, is a famous pig distribution center in China. However, when the reporter visited the town at the end of July, he found that the pig industry in many villages here had been depressed.
Before going to 2 1 village in the new countryside, people in Gong Peng Town said that every household there raised pigs, which was a veritable professional village for raising pigs. When the reporter arrived in the village, he found that every farmer had a pigsty, but the pigsty was empty. Under the guidance of the villagers, I went to the remaining two farmers, and as a result, their pigs were sold recently.
"If his home is gone, the whole village will be gone." Several villagers playing cards at the entrance of the village said that most of the pigs sold in the past two years were pigs. "The market is not good, sick. Small farmers are too risky to raise pigs. " But when the reporter asked them what diseases they were, some farmers said, "Some diseases are unclear and even veterinarians can't cure them."
13 village only has 1 farm, which is two miles away from 2 1 village. Kang Jianmin, a villager in 13 village, witnessed the rise and fall of aquaculture in these two villages. "Many farmers have gone bankrupt, and individual pig farmers have lost money in the past few years." Kang Jianmin, who once kept the scale of hundreds of breeding heads, gave up raising pigs at the end of last year. He said: "On the one hand, the impact comes from the market, on the other hand, various diseases have suddenly appeared in large numbers in recent years."
Kang Jianmin said that in the past two years, there were not only foot-and-mouth disease, myocarditis and other diseases, but also many unknown diseases. "Veterinarians of these diseases can't break out at all. They will only let you try this medicine. This medicine is irreplaceable. I changed it several times and the pig died, which made people angry. " For Kang Jianmin, who has 78 years of farming experience, he can't seek medical advice for these diseases that he has never encountered before. Some pigs are sick and have to wait for death.
Kang Jianmin has also encountered the phenomenon of stillbirth of sows. "One year I raised 10 sows, and both sows were stillborn." Kang Jianmin can't explain why.
There are 9 villages 100 households more than ten miles away from Gong Peng town, and all kinds of excrement are piled up everywhere on the roadside, which stinks.
At present, this village is still a professional farming village, but the structure of farmers has undergone major adjustments. According to villagers, 80% of farmers here used to raise pigs, but now the proportion is only 10%. "Pig farmers have changed to raise chickens, and some people have gone out to work."
"Gong Peng Town raised pigs from our village, and now it has become like this." When it comes to the glory of the pig industry in the past, the villager Hou Dejun can't help but feel a little sad.
As an old farmer, Hou Dejun's intuition is that the mortality rate of pigs has been extremely high in recent years. "No matter whether it is a big pig with a few hundred kilograms or a little pig with a few kilograms, I don't know what disease I got and died."
Caused by corn mildew?
In addition to mice and pigs, the reporter also found abnormal situations in sheep and dogs in Jinzhong.
A professional sheep farmer in Yangcun said that in the past, ewes could give birth to two or three at a time, but now there is only one, at most two.
Li Fuyun, from Nanxiang Village in Jinzhong, said that two goats in his family also miscarried this year, which made him very sad.
A farmer who buys wool and lambs in Yongkang village said that in the last two years, he often received aborted lambs and lambs that died at birth.
A dog dealer also chatted with reporters that dogs often have liver ascites or kidney ascites now, and there is always a lot of water when laparotomy is performed. He said that he usually doesn't buy dogs with big bellies now because these dogs will lose money.
What causes these animals to have puzzling anomalies?
Zhao Wansheng, the owner of yushu city Xingyuan Breeding Pig Farm, believes that the abnormality of pigs is due to eating moldy corn. Moldy corn will lead to the decline of immunity of pigs, which may lead to late estrus, abortion and stillbirth of pigs.
Dr Ann Jacqueline, Senior Program Director of the Food and Nutrition Committee of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, told the International Herald Tribune that the problems in pig production were caused by eating corn infected with zearalenone, a mycotoxin. She said that many environments will provide the best opportunities for this mold to grow in corn, such as improper heat preservation during harvesting or transportation, long-term drought or rainy days during planting. In addition, when corn is bitten by pests or for the above reasons, it will be infected with a mold called Fusarium. These molds can cause reproductive system disorders in pigs, such as premature delivery, abortion, stillbirth and abnormal estrus cycle.
However, pig farmers do not agree with these analyses. They told reporters that the corn they used to feed pigs was not moldy and could not be moldy for four or five years. Yu He, who graduated from Shanxi Agricultural University, is a veterinarian from yanggu county. He has been practicing medicine locally for decades. Now he is over 70 years old. He said that since last year, he has noticed that the phenomenon of pig abortion and stillbirth in this county has increased. Recently, he has received several farmers who have been asking for help. Yu He said: "These symptoms of pigs are caused by corn mildew, bacterial infection or pesticide poisoning. It is necessary to treat these diseases with the right medicine. However, farmers reported that their corn was not moldy or poisoned. " This puzzled Yu and he could not treat unexplained abortion and stillbirth.
Yu He told reporters that all the farmers who asked him for help reflected a similar situation: Xianyu 335 corn was planted at home.
In the interview, the reporter found that almost all of these abnormal animals have eaten the same kind of corn-Xianyu 335.
Related and unrelated to Xianyu 335
Among all the pig farmers surveyed by the reporter, they all said that since Xianyu 335 corn was planted at home, it has become pig feed. And pigs are abnormal, all after eating these corn.
Although the sheep in Jinzhong don't eat Xianyu 335 directly, the main feed is corn residue after local corn vinegar, which is commonly known as "vinegar residue" locally.
In the rural areas of Jinzhong and Yushu visited by reporters, Xianyu 335 occupied more than half of the country. Liu Min told reporters that it was after planting this kind of corn that he found that rats gradually decreased.
When the reporter interviewed 9 villages in the new countryside of Gong Peng Town, he found that there was nothing unusual in the sow of a farmer. She started raising sows last year, and now she keeps the size of more than a dozen. She said that the general farrowing rate of her sow is 12. The reporter specifically asked about the pig's feed. The farmer said that her own corn was mainly domestic "Credibility 1", and she had never planted Xianyu 335.
Lao Zhang, who bought corn in Jinzhong, introduced that in May this year, when he went to Shentanggou Village in Wujinshan Town to collect corn, he opened the hoarded corn and accidentally found 10 mice. He hasn't seen a big mouse come out of the warehouse for years. That family grows ordinary corn. The village is more than 20 kilometers away from Jinzhong and is located in the hilly and mountainous areas. The planting area of Xianyu 335 in the village is only about 5%.
However, the farmers interviewed by the reporter rarely suspect that there is something wrong with the feed they give to animals. Some people even think that eating corn is "impossible", and people who have problems with mice should also have problems. Some experts told reporters that Xianyu 335 was officially promoted in 2004 and popularized in 2006. In 5~6 years, mice can be passed on for more than 20 generations, and pigs can be passed on for 3 generations, which is only one tenth of the life cycle of people. So the mice do well, but people won't have a serious reaction.
Liu Min has been surfing the Internet since last June+10. When he learned from the internet that there was still genetically modified corn in the world, he began to doubt the "identity" of 335 from the beginning. He remembers that when selling corn seeds at that time, the salesman said that this kind of corn was an American variety, which had good effects of disease resistance, lodging resistance, drought resistance and yield increase.
Father is genetically modified.
"Farmers' observations are often higher than scientists' discoveries. Many clues can be provided by farmers, and scholars are often in the laboratory. Some data in the laboratory are pale and powerless compared with real problems. " Regarding Liu Min's suspicion, Jiang Gaoming, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, thinks Xianyu 335 is genetically modified corn, but from various indications, this kind of corn may be "somewhat manipulated".
Liu Min's suspicion stems from the animal reactions caused by genetically modified foods in other countries. In transgenic animal experiments in many countries around the world, animal anomalies similar to those in Jinzhong and Yushu areas have been found. Among them, the documents published by the National Academy of Sciences and the US Department of Health explain the abnormal cases caused by the use of genetically modified feed all over the world, including mice with abnormal internal organs, fake pregnant or infertile pigs and abnormal dead cows. Industry organizations also reported that after the emergence of genetically modified soybean food in the British market, residents' allergies increased by 50%, and the same situation occurred in Brazil. According to the report, these anomalies were "not found when reviewing genetically modified foods".
So, is Xianyu 335 a genetically modified corn? According to the announcement of China Agriculture Department, Xianyu 335 is a hybrid corn bred by American Pioneer Company. Its female parent is PH6WC, and its male parent is PH4CV, all of which are selfed by Pioneer Company.
According to the patent technical statement of the inventor of PH4CV, the classification regulations of the patent department of the US government and the classification statistics of the US Department of Agriculture, it can be said that the male parent PH4CV of Xianyu 335 corn belongs to a transgenic (or transgenic) corn variety.