Special report Deformities, sickness and livestock deaths: the real cost of GM animal feed?

Much of our meat and dairy produce is made from animals raised on GM feeds. Alarming new claims suggest that the GM diet is affecting animal health - prompting fears over human safety. Andrew Wasley reports ...

At first glance the frozen bundles could be mistaken for conventional joints of meat. But as Ib Pedersen, a Danish pig farmer, lifts them carefully out of the freezer it becomes apparent they are in fact whole piglets - some horribly deformed, with growths or other abnormalities, others stunted.

This is the result, Pedersen claims, of feeding the animals a diet containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Or more specifically, he believes, feed made from GM soya and sprayed with the controversial herbicide glyphosate.  

Pedersen, who produces 13,000 pigs a year and supplies Europe's largest pork company Danish Crown, says he became so alarmed at the apparent levels of deformity, sickness, deaths, and poor productivity he was witnessing in his animals that he decided to experiment by changing their diet from GM to non-GM feed.

The results, he says, were remarkable: "When using GM feed I saw symptoms of bloat, stomach ulcers, high rates of diarrhoea, pigs born with the deformities ... but when I switched [to non GM feed] these problems went away, some within a matter of days."

The farmer says that not only has the switch in diet improved the visible health of the pigs, it has made the farm more profitable, with less medicine use and higher productivity. "Less abortions, more piglets born in each litter, and breeding animals living longer." He also maintains that man hours have been reduced, with less cleaning needed and fewer complications with the animals.

Inside the farmhouse, piles of paperwork are laid out across a vast table; print outs, reports, statistics, scientific research, correspondence. Pedersen shows me photos he says are of animals adversely affected by the GM feed - there's more piglets with spinal deformities, their back legs dragging on the ground; others have visible problems with their faces, limbs or tails. There's even a siamese twin - two animals joined at the head.

Pedersen believes these abnormalities, and the other problems, were caused - at least in part - by the presence of the herbicide glyphosate in his GM pig feed. Glyphosate is routinely sprayed on many soya and cereal crops to kill weeds and maximise yields.

Although it is used on conventional crops, its usage on GM soya and maize is particularly prevalent as the crops are engineered to be resistant to the chemical, killing the weeds but leaving the crop plants unaffected.

The introduction of GM crops resistant to glyphosate allowed crops to be sprayed with the herbicide to control weeds - often many times over a growing season - without killing the crop. But this also led to much higher levels of glyphosate in the plants and seeds. 

After glyphosate-resistant strains of soy were introduced in 1996, EU regulators raised the allowed maximum residue limit (MRL) for glyphosate in imported soy 200-fold, from 0.1 mg/kg to 20 mg/kg. 

Glyphosate use has become increasingly controversial in recent years, with a growing body of research, say campaigners, suggesting that exposure, even at low levels, can be harmful to animals and humans.

Studies have also suggested, claim critics, that the herbicide may disrupt the human endocrine system, which regulates the body's biological processes, meaning that any level of exposure could pose a significant risk to health.

Such claims are vigorously refuted by the agro-chemical industry, who state the herbicide is safe and who accuse campaigners of touting flawed research, or manipulating the findings to suit their own agenda.

Pedersen claims that independent testing revealed all of his deformed pigs had glyphosate in their organs. He shows me a chart he suggests shows a clear correlation between the volume of glyphosate found in pig feed and higher numbers of cranial and spinal deformities. "The more glyphosate, the more deformities," he says, bluntly.

Outside, along a muddy track through a number of arable fields - in addition to pigs, Pedersen produces strawberries, peas and potatoes - we come to the main pig house. It's vast and crowded, efficient and noisy, with the unmistakable stink of pig waste. A factory farm.

Pedersen shows me the farrowing crates, the large bodies of the nursing sows squeezed under metal bars, surrounded by up to a dozen weaning piglets. He points out his best animals - the most productive, the veterans - and stops to check on those he has concerns about, examining a swollen joint here or an inflamed nipple there. Antibiotics are administered to one.

In the main hall the pigs move more freely, as they do in a series of smaller rooms where younger animals are kept as they grow. The farmer manually throws down handfuls of sandy-looking feed to supplement that available in the conical feed troughs. The feed mix, he explains, contains soya, fishmeal and other ingredients - but nothing of GM origin.

Pederson admits his work isn't scientific but says the results should alarm people. He's worried that many farmers have no idea of the potential impact of GM feed, and that the same is true for consumers: when using GM feed, he says, "Everything was down in the quagmire ... We had eleven pigs die in one day."

Deformities and deaths "the new normal"

The farmer's research, and outspoken stance, provoked a storm of controversy in Danish agricultural circles after the respected farming publication Effektivt Landbrug featured the story, interviewing Pedersen in detail and referring to the pig farmers' suggestion that DDT and thalidomide - linked to deformities in up to 10,000 babies - could be regarded as trivial compared to the potential risks from GM and glyphosate.

Critics accused him of scaremongering and slammed the findings as unscientific and "without merit" - pointing out that if the claims were true, thousands of other farmers using GM feed would be recording similar problems.

Despite this, Pedersen's work has prompted the Danish Pig Research Centre (VSP) to announce an in-depth study to test the effects of GM and non-GM soya on animal health. The findings of the research have yet to be published.

And Pedersen's findings are beginning to spread well beyond Denmark; earlier this month the German television channel ARD broadcast a documentary featuring the farmer's claims, and Pedersen himself recently travelled to the UK to address a packed symposium at the House of Commons, organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group On Agroecology.

Anti-GM campaigners say the findings are particularly compelling as the observations were made in a real farm setting, not a laboratory. Claire Robinson of GM Watch told The Ecologist.

"The findings are worrying and consistent with reports from some farmers and vets in the US, who noticed a downturn in the health and reproductive performance in pigs and cattle after GM feed became common." 

"Farmers who have worked to exclude GM ingredients from their feed report dramatic improvements in herd health. Farmers should be worried and should not settle for what some scientists are calling a 'new norm' of increased rates of malformations, deaths and digestive and reproductive problems, as GM feed becomes more common."

Peter Melchett, of the Soil Association, says: "Farmers in countries as far apart as Denmark and India have been saying for many years that they have noticed serious ill-health in their animals when feeding GM feed ... practical research on pigs has shown significant impact of GM compared to non-GM feed."

The Danish farmer's claims have also been supported by veterinary experts. Professor Monika Kruger, of Leipzig University, says there is growing evidence showing that glyphosate is dangerous for both animals and people:

"A lot of livestock are ill and nobody is interested. In most cases the highest concentrations come from GM products like soya, rapeseed and corn. We [have] also found glyphosate in meat."

Professor Kruger, who's own research suggested that glyphosate may be toxic to dairy cows, and apparently linked to cases of botulism in cattle, says farmers - and the wider food industry including supermarkets - should be "very concerned" about the claims, and believes that glyphosate should be "eliminated" from farming.

Her comments follow the publication last year of controversial research by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, an expert in molecular biology at Caen University in France, which claimed that rats fed a diet of GM maize, or exposed to glyphosate, for two years, developed higher levels of cancers and died earlier than controls.

The study, published in the peer reviewed publication Food and Chemical Toxicology, was the first of its kind to test the impact of GM, and glyphosate, over such a long period - many previous experiments lasted 90 days. The findings led Seralini to argue that glyphosate's apparent endocrine disrupting effects might be responsible.

The study was criticised by the agribusiness industry and academics however, who said it contained methodological flaws, was scientifically substandard, and its findings sensationalised.

A review by the European Food Safety Authority later concluded that Seralini's research could not be regarded as scientifically sound because of inadequacies in the design, reporting and analysis of the study. This has been challenged by the research team.

More recently, research led by Dr. Judy Carman, Associate Professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, claimed that pig health could be harmed by the consumption of feed containing GM crops.

Carmen studied two sets of pigs - one fed a GM diet, one a non-GM diet - from a US piggery over a period of more than five months. Each group was farmed identically in terms of housing and feeding conditions, before being slaughtered and autopsied.

The researchers found that the GM-fed females had, on average, a 25 per cent heavier uterus than non-GM-fed females, 'a possible indicator of disease' according to the study team. The level of severe inflammation in stomachs was also reportedly higher in pigs fed on the GM diet.