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发帖数: 29846 | 1 EU: No Need for New Study on Monsanto Corn .
By NEENA RAI and MICHAEL HADDON
The European Union Food Safety Authority said Wednesday that there is no
need to reevaluate the safety of genetically engineered corn made by
Monsanto Co. MON +0.09% because a study linking the crop to cancer in rats
published in September had serious defects in its design and methodology.
The EU's decision comes after the French government said last month it would
no longer pursue an immediate ban on EU imports of the corn made by the St.
Louis-based chemicals giant, known as NK603, after French food safety
regulator ANSES also decided the study was flawed.
ANSES said the number of rats included in the study was too small to make
any finding statistically significant.
The University of Caen study, led by Gilles-Eric Seralini, concluded that
rats fed for two years on NK603 corn, or exposed to the company's Roundup
brand of glyphosate weed killer designed to be used with the corn, developed
more tumors and other severe diseases than a control group fed regular corn
. The study also found that rats exposed to Roundup exhibited more disease
symptoms than the test group.
Monsanto officials responded to the study saying they didn't believe it
presented any information that justified a change on the approval of NK603
imports or broader views on the safety of the genetically modified products.
"Conclusions cannot be regarded as scientifically sound because of
inadequacies in the design, reporting and analysis of the study as outlined
in the paper," the EFSA said in a statement. "Consequently, it is not
possible to draw valid conclusions about the occurrence of tumors in the
rats tested, based on the information published by Seralini et al."
The EFSA made similar criticisms of the paper last month, but also requested
additional information from the study's authors related to experimental
design, reporting and analysis of findings to help inform its final
assessment. "No such material had reached the Authority before publication
of this statement," it said.
Mr. Seralini wasn't immediately available for comment Wednesday. After the
ANSES decision last month, he said he stood by the results of his two-year
research.
Before reaching its final conclusions, the EFSA said it considered
independent assessments of the Seralini study by organizations in the EU
member states of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the
Netherlands. |
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