More Biological Warfare! Are Boar Spreading GM?

No not that GM!

Boar, wild pigs, swine stand accused of many dastardly deeds. Digging up planted fields, ruining crops, preventing nuts and acorn seeds to germinate, making mud wallows out of placid mosquito infested ditches, eating lambs and spreading disease are only a few. Giving us swine flu for free. Last but not least, let us not forget the selective commando raids on Arab crops.

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that boar now are also suspected of dispersing germinable transgenic seeds of GM corn all over creation thus interfering with the safety of our meat supply.

Not so, say researchers from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), one of Germany's leading research institutions comparable to MIT in the United States. Their research was funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with the objective to determine how fallow deer and boar metabolize genetically modified (GM) maize. Specifically, whether boar and fallow deer fed with genetically altered corn spread germinable transgenic seeds with their feces.

In the course of the experiment, one group of fallow deer and boar, confined to enclosures and pens, was exclusively fed GM maize while control groups enjoyed natural, unaltered maize for several weeks. Samples of feces were collected and later analyzed. At the end of the experiment the scientists also took tissue samples from the digestive tract, the internal organs, blood, muscles of the animals.

The researcher found small fragments of the gene that had been genetically introduced into the corn only in the intestinal tract of the test boar. Neither fallow deer nor boar had even a trace of the introduced gene in any tissue outside of the gastrointestinal tract.

"The meat of the animals we examined was entirely free of transgenic components", concluded professor Heinrich H.D. Meyer, who chairs the Physiology Department of the research institute.

That does not necessarily appease environmentalists and organic farmers. They worry about the spread of genetically modified corn from germinable transgenic seeds in the feces of animals fed with modified maize or other feed.

Nothing to worry here either. Whole, germinable maize corns did not fare well. In boar “a mere 0.015% of the conventional and 0.009% of the transgenic maize kernels were excreted intact”. This resulted in one single plantlet and another one with abnormal growth. Fallow deer feces did contain not one single whole maize corn.

Encouraging as this may sound, there is however one caveat. The digestive process is not equally effective for other seeds and in all animals. The scientists conducting the research fed rape to controlled groups of animals. While not one rape seeds could be found in boar feces, fallow deer excreted plenty. And 13.6 percent of the seeds so retrieved were still capable of germination.

Organic farmers, environmentalists and hunters do not have to worry about negative effects of genetically modified animal feed on the meat produced for consumption.

But this research leaves me to wonder whether our Arab friends now have to worry about special forces of fallow deer sent to their fields to excrete genetically modified rape seeds that in turn germinate into genetically modified rape plants to be consumed by unsuspecting natives of Samaria.

PJJ