Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

LC Logo GM Food/Feed: Gaps in risk-associated research that need to be filled

Date: Monday, December 1st, 2003

Start: 3:30 pm

Location: Ames, Iowa

This public seminar by Dr. Arpad Pusztai was co-sponsored by the Leopold Center and the Iowa State University Bioethics Program. Pusztai offered a review of currently published and available data on the impacts of genetically modified foods in animal feeding trials, leading to a summary of existing knowledge and outstanding questions. He described evidence suggesting adverse effects on or within the alimentary track, along with recent efforts to better understand the fate and impacts of novel GM food proteins as they move through an animal's digestive system. He also discussed recent and ongoing research in Europe, where significant public and private investments have been made to establish a rigorous scientific base for GM food safety assessments.

Born in Hungary, he received his degree in chemistry in Budapest and his B.Sc. in physiology and Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of London. His career spans 50 years and work at universities and research institutes in Budapest, London, Chicago and Aberdeen (Rowett Research Institute). He has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed papers and wrote or edited 12 scientific books.

During the past 30 years, Dr. Pusztai he has pioneered research into the effects of dietary lectins (carbohydrate-reactive proteins), including those transgenically expressed in GM crop plants, on the gastrointestinal tract. His laboratory research on the nutritional and developmental impacts of a transgenic potato with increased natural pest protection has raised public and scientific inquiry in Europe. His October 16, 1999 study results, co-authored with Dr. Stanley Ewen and published in the respected British medical Journal The Lancet, remains the most sensitive and rigorous GM food feeding trial ever conducted.

Since 1998, Dr. Pusztai has been lecturing and acting as a consultant to groups exploring research in the area of health effects of GM foods. He is currently serving as a consultant to the Norwegian Food Sciences Institute.

Related information

View overheads from presentation [PDF]

Visit Dr. Arpad Pusztai's website

Download Chapter 16: Genetically Modified Foods: Potential Human Health Effects, Food Safety: Contaminants and Toxins [April 2003, edited by J.P.F. D'Mello, Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh, UK; ISBN: 0851996078]

Download Pusztai's seminal article on the impacts of GM potatoes on rats, The Lancet [October 16 1999, Vol. 354, No. 9187, pgs. 1353-1354]

More about the 1999 study

In 1996 and 1997, Dr. Pusztai and his co-worker and wife Dr. Susan Bardocz carried out the first carefully designed and highly sensitive nutrition and toxicologiocal feeding study testing a genetically modified food, potatoes engineered to express the snowdrop lectin gene. When he discussed their findings in an interview broadcast on January 13, 1998 as part of the evening BBC news, a series of events was triggered that have profoundly impacted scientific and public attitudes about GM foods.

Just days after the interview, Dr. Pusztai was relieved of his duties by the director of the Rowett Research Institute, had his laboratory notes confiscated, and was in effect banned from any further interaction with his colleagues at Rowett, where the experiment had been conducted. His wife was then the manager of the division of the Rowett Institute within which the work was carried out. She, too, lost her job over the controversy triggered by the article.

In its October 16, 1999 issue, the respected British medical journal The Lancet published the Pusztai study results, in an article co-authored with Dr. Stanley Ewen. The research was subjected to an unprecedented two-year campaign of criticism carried out by proponents of GM technology. The U.K. Royal Society played an active role in organizing and publicizing criticisms of the Pusztai-Ewen experiment. The Lancet subsequently published a series of letters raising various questions and criticisms, to which Pusztai and Ewen responded fully. The validity of their study and its findings remain intact. To this day, the Pusztai-Ewen experiment remains the most sensitive and rigorous GM food feeding trial ever conducted.

Pusztai, Ewen and Bardocz knew very little about GM technology when they successfully competed for the $1.2 million grant from the Scottish government that supported their GM potato feeding study. They discussed the results of this research in much the same way as they had discussed the results of dozens of earlier studies. They did not anticipate the events that would be triggered by their work and a brief report on the evening BBC news program.

*Account written by Dr. Charles Benbrook, director of the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center and manager of the AgBiotech InfoNet, based in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Related papers supplied for the seminar

Several research and commentary articles of relevance were available for the seminar:

  • “Gut flora in health and disease,” Guarner and Malagelada; The Lancet Feb 8, 2003; 360: 512-19 [review]

  • “In vivo studies on possible health consequences of genetically modified food and feed, with particular regard to ingredients consisting of genetically modified plant materials,” Pryme and Lembcke; Nutrition and Health, 2003; Vol. 17: 1-8

  • “Detection of corn intrinsic and recombinant DNA fragments and Cry1Ab protein in the gastrointestinal contents of pigs fed genetically modified corn Bt11,” Chowdhury, Kuribara, Hino, Sultana, Mikami, Shimada, Guruge, Saito, Nakajima; Journal of Animal Science 2003: 81:2546-2551

  • “GM food safety: Scientific and institutional issues,” Pusztai; Science as Culture 2002; Vol.11, Number 1: 69-92

  • “Can science give us the tools for recognizing possible health risks for GM food?” Pusztai; Nutrition and Health 2002; Vol.16: 73-84