Large GMO and pesticide study launched

A US$25 million (€20 million) Factor GMO study will investigate the health effects of a genetically modified crop that has been in food and animal feed supplies for many years. Factor GMO’s preparatory phase started in early 2014. The full experiment will begin in 2015 and will last 2 - 3 years, with interim results being published at regular intervals during that time. It will test a herbicide-tolerant GM maize and realistic levels of the glyphosate herbicide it is engineered to be grown with and take place at undisclosed locations in Western Europe and Russia.

Laboratory animals (rats) will be fed the GM food and pesticides according to a protocol whose scale, rigour and range of measurements will meet and exceed current international standards for testing the toxicity of GM foods, pesticides, and other chemicals. The three arms (toxicity, carcinogenicity and multi-generational arms) of the experiment will enable vital questions to be answered, such as: Is the GM food (or its associated pesticide) toxic to organ systems over the long-term? Does the GM food (or its associated pesticide) cause cancer? Does the GM food (or its associated pesticide) reduce fertility or cause birth defects? Is the mixture of chemicals present in Roundup herbicide more or less toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate?

The 3 scientists on the study review board are Dr. Oxana Sinitsyna; Deputy Director for Science at A. N. Sysin Research Institute of Human Ecology and Environmental Health of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow; Dr. Bruce Blumberg; Professor, Developmental & Cell Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine, USA; and Dr. Fiorella Belpoggi (on the Review Board as a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini); Director and Chief of Pathology of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Centre of the Ramazzini Institute, Bentivoglio, Italy.

The Russian National Association for Genetic Safety (NAGS) is the initiator and coordinator of the Factor GMO experiment. However, NAGS has had and will have no involvement in designing the study, in the day-to-day running of the experiment, or in the gathering, interpretation, or publication of the scientific results. These aspects have been and will continue to be decided and controlled by the independent and neutral scientific review board. More information is available here.