Mouse with Nowse

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Wednesday, 05 June 2002

In the Comment column of The Ecologist, 5th June2002, Devinder Sharma tells of a 17-year-old Dutch student’s alarming experiments with GM food and mice. Hinze Hogendoorn bought 30 female mice and a variety of foodstuffs, including rodent mix, some breakfast cereals labelled GM-free, and some GM soya and maize. The food was put in separate GM and non-GM food bowls. The mice polished off all the GM-free food but the GM food remained untouched. So Hogendoorn force-fed some of the mice on the GM food.

The GM-fed mice initially put on weight but then started to lose it and at the end of the experiment weighed less than the GM-free mice which had not eaten as much. But it was the behavioural changes that were most worrying: the GM-fed mice were less active and seemed very nervous and distressed. Some would run around their basket, scratching at the bedding and frantically try to jump up the sides.

Apart from the obvious concerns raised by this research, I find it interesting that the mice can so readily tell the difference. In the same column, Devinder also reports that when Flavr Savr tomatoes (the first GM product to be marketed, genetically altered to ripen more slowly), were tested on mice, they initially refused to eat them and when force-fed they became ill.

Since putting this story on the site I have heard that cattle, escaping from their fields in the US, have been seen to walk straight through fields of GM maize without touching it....and they keep walking until they find non-GM!