So-called animal abnormal events
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 transgenic crop. "If this is the case, the abnormal reactions of various animals in Shanxi, Jilin and other places will have a more reasonable explanation." "Some experts told reporters that Xianyu 335 was officially promoted in 2004, and it was also promoted in different regions before genetic modification. The cottonseed cake of genetically modified cotton is also an additive feed for livestock in this area, which was 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. 1, the disappearing 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." . The pig's stomach is full of water. Sows give birth less, and there are more cases of infertility, false birth and abortion. 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. Not long ago, he found that sows gave birth to fewer and fewer piglets. Chen Hongjun, a pig farmer in Sujia Village, encountered a similar situation. He lost at least 1/3 piglets due to stillbirth and miscarriage. 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. In the interview, the reporter found that almost all of these abnormal animals have eaten cottonseed cake and a kind of corn-Xianyu 335. 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. Since the beginning, she has maintained the body shape of more than a dozen sows. 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 area, introduced that 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, according to the on-the-spot investigation by experts in the agricultural sector, there is no genetically modified corn planted in Shanxi and Jilin, and Xianyu 335 is not a genetically modified variety. According to the description of local villagers, the number of local mice has indeed decreased compared with previous years, which may be due to the ban on highly toxic rodenticides in yushu city City, Jilin Province and Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province for many years, resulting in an increase in natural enemies of mice; Farmers use cement floors in granaries, and it is difficult for mice to make holes; Moreover, during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Taiyuan, as an alternate airport in Beijing, once took centralized rodent control measures. Phenomenon,
Brazil nut incident
Brazil nuts contain a protein 2S albumin rich in methionine and cysteine. In order to improve the nutritional quality of soybean, in May 438+0994 65438+10, researchers from American Pioneer Seed Company tried to transfer the gene encoding protein 2S albumin from Brazil nuts to soybean (the abstract was published in Journal of Cell Biochemistry, 1994, Suppl 18A: 70). However, they realized that some people were allergic to Brazil nuts, and then they tested the soybean transformed with the gene encoding protein 2S albumin, and found that people allergic to Brazil nuts were also allergic to this soybean. Protein 2S albumin may be the main allergen in Brazil nuts (research results are published in New England Journal of Medicine,1996,334: 688-692). So Pioneer Seed Company cancelled its research plan. This incident was described as "food allergy caused by genetically modified soybeans". The "Brazil nut incident" is also the only case in which genetically modified food is not commercialized due to allergies. In fact, there is a list of foods that produce allergic reactions and their related genes in the world. When studying genetically modified crops, researchers should not use the genes of these allergic foods at first; For the new protein made of genetically modified crops, its chemical composition and structure need to be compared with more than 500 known allergens, and if they are similar, they will also be discarded; In addition, the digestibility of new protein formed by foreign genes should also be detected. You can't eat it if you can't digest it quickly.
Pustai incident.
The "Putztai" incident is considered as a turning point in public opinion that triggered the debate on the safety of genetically modified crops. 1In the autumn of 998, Arpad Pusztai, a scientist from the Scottish Lovett Institute, made a speech on TV, saying that he fed the mice with potatoes with snowdrop lectin gene in the experiment, and then the weight of the mice and organs decreased seriously, and the immune system was destroyed. This statement caused an international sensation. Driven by green, equal and environmental protection NGOs, Europe has set off an anti-GM food craze. Pustai's experiment was questioned. It is said that he rashly disseminated his conclusions to the public through the media before completing the experiment and publishing the data. The genetically modified potato he studied was made by himself. At that time, there was no possibility of listing, and he was not in a hurry to publicize the experiment. The Royal Society attached great importance to the "Pustai Incident" and organized experts to conduct peer review on the experiment. 1 May, 1999, the evaluation report pointed out that there were six major mistakes and defects in Pustai's experiment: (1) The difference in chemical composition between transgenic and non-transgenic potatoes could not be determined; Do not add protein to mice that eat genetically modified potatoes to prevent hunger; The number of experimental animals is small, and feeding several different foods is not the standard food for rats, which lacks statistical significance; The experimental design is poor, and no double-blind determination is made; Improper statistical methods; The experimental results are inconsistent. Later, the Lovett Institute announced that Pustai had retired early and was no longer responsible for his remarks.
Transgenic corn event
Serraglini, a French molecular endocrinologist, and his colleagues published an article in the seventh issue of International Journal of Biological Sciences in 2009, discussing the experimental and analytical conclusions of feeding mice with three kinds of genetically modified corn from Monsanto. It has been pointed out that after eating transgenic corn for three months, the liver, kidney and heart functions of mice are adversely affected to varying degrees. As early as 2007, Seralini and his colleagues made a statistical analysis of the original experimental data of genetically modified corn from Monsanto (the article was published in Archives of Environmental Pollution and Toxicology, 2007, 52: 596-602), and reached a conclusion similar to that in 2009. Six toxicology and statistics experts from the United States, Germany, Britain and Canada formed a peer review group to review and evaluate the research in Serraglini and Monsanto, and published the evaluation results in Toxicology of Food and Chemicals. The expert review team believes that the reanalysis of Monsanto's original experimental data by Serraglini and others did not produce meaningful new data to show that transgenic corn caused adverse side effects in the three-month feeding study of mice. In 2007, the research team led by Juergen Zentek, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Vienna, Austria, conducted animal experiments on the hybrid of herbicide-resistant transgenic maize NK603 and transgenic Bt insect-resistant maize MON8 10 developed by Monsanto. After 20 weeks of observation, Zetek found that transgenic corn was potentially dangerous to the reproductive ability of mice. Two experts recognized by international peers (Dr. John DeSesso and Dr. James Lamb) specially reviewed and commented on Dr. Zetek's research afterwards, and issued an independent statement, believing that there were serious mistakes and defects. This study can not support any conclusion that eating genetically modified corn MON8 10 and NK603 may have adverse effects on reproduction. A scientist from Monsanto came to the same conclusion in the review. According to the data, the two genetically modified corn varieties involved in Professor Zetek's research have been recognized as safe by more than 20 regulatory authorities around the world. Defective research in Zetek has led to misjudgment of the safety of genetically modified corn, and the rapid and widespread dissemination of its research results may have caused public misunderstanding of genetically modified crops.
Monarch butterfly incident
1In May, 1999, Losey, a professor of entomology at Cornell University, published an article in Nature, saying that he fed monarch butterfly larvae with milkweed leaves mixed with transgenic insect-resistant corn pollen and found that these larvae grew slowly and the mortality rate was as high as 44%. Roche believes that this result shows that insect-resistant transgenic crops also pose a threat to non-target insects. Soon after, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) organized insect experts to conduct a special study on monarch butterflies. It is concluded that transgenic insect-resistant corn pollen does not pose a threat to monarch butterflies in the field, because (1) corn pollen is large and heavy, so it does not spread far. In the field, only one corn pollen was found on the milkweed 5 meters away from the corn field. (2) Monarch butterflies generally don't eat corn pollen, and they lay eggs in large quantities after the corn is scattered. (3) Among the fields surveyed in the Midwest of the United States, corn fields with insect-resistant genes account for 25% of the total corn fields, but there are a large number of monarch butterflies in the fields.