“Disappearing Rats and Dying Pigs” Are GMOs to Blame? Grim reports of dying pigs in China since 2006; are they linked to GM feed? By Dr Mae-Wan Ho "On 21 September 2010, the International Herald Leader (Chinese) carried a report from Xinhua news agency on the mysterious disappearance of rats from the fields and villages in the provinces of Shaanxi and Jilin, while farmers’ pigs were decreasing in number simultaneously as the sows were suffering miscarriages and still births. People blamed the new Xianyu 335 (XY335) corn that they have planted and used as feed for several years. XY 335 is a hybrid corn owned by Pioneer, a subsidiary of DuPont. It was introduced into the market in 2004 with the formal approval of the Agriculture Ministry, and sales exploded in 2008-2009. XY335 was suspected to be a GMO (genetically modified organism), or a hybrid between a GM and non-GM variety. Jin Wei, investigative journalist then working for the newspaper that belongs to Xinhua, had travelled to the villages to see for himself that the rats were indeed disappearing from the village and fields planted with XY 335, and more disturbingly, sows fed on the hybrid corn gave birth to far fewer (as well as dead and deformed) piglets than those of farmers who had not taken up the new hybrid corn. This was the start of a saga that Jin presented at the recent conference on GMOs and Food Safety International Forum held in Yunnan, China [1]."
Posted on: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 14:44:23 +0000
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