GMO Pundit a.k.a. David Tribe: Yet another peer-reviewed study attesting safety of a GM crop

GMO Pundit's list of 150+ peer reviewed papers relating to GM food and feed safet y continues to grow.

This 159th paper just added to the list was this one:

Alfalfa Containing the Glyphosate-Tolerant Trait Has No Effect on Feed Intake, Milk Composition, or Milk Production of Dairy Cattle

D. K. Combs and G. F. Hartnell
J. Dairy Sci. 91:673–678 doi:10.3168/jds.2007-0611
*Department of Dairy Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706
†Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO, 6316

ABSTRACT
The objective of this experiment was to assess if feeding glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa affects feed intake, milk composition, or milk production of dairy cows. One alfalfa (Medicago sativa), variety expressing the CP4 EPSPS protein and grown in southeastern Washington State was harvested at the late vegetative stage as hay.

Three commercial conventional varieties of alfalfa hay of similar nutrient composition and harvested in the same geographic region were fed to cows as controls.

The commercial hays were selected to be similar in crude protein [18% of dry matter (DM)] and neutral detergent fiber (40% of DM) to the glyphosate-tolerant hay. Sixteen multiparous Holstein cows were fed diets containing alfalfa hay (39.7% of diet DM) from either the glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa, or 1 of the 3 conventional varieties. Diets contained at least 15.7% crude protein and 29% neutral detergent fiber. Experimental design was a replicated 4 × 4 Latin square. Periods were 28 d and feed intake, milk yield, and milk composition were summarized over the last 14 d of each period.

Daily milk yield (38.0 kg) and 4% fat-corrected milk (34.7 kg) were not affected by treatment. Milk fat (3.44%) and milk true protein (2.98%) were also not affected by source of hay. Milk lactose (4.72%) and solids-not-fat (8.5%) did not differ due to treatment.

Dry matter intake was similar across treatments (24.4 kg/d). These results are consistent with data from feeding trials with other glyphosate-tolerant crops and previously reported compositional comparisons of glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa with controls.

Milk production, milk composition, feed intake, and feed efficiency were not affected by feeding diets that contained nearly 40% glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa hay to lactating dairy cows.

Key words: glyphosate, Roundup Ready, alfalfa,dairy cow

Labels: Dairy products, Risk management, Safety and Regulations, Stockfeed

4 Comments:

At 2:19 AM, Anastasia said...: I'm glad to read that they are doing studies on the safety of GMOs. Although, this could also be interpreted as a study on the safety of glycophosphate itself.

Thank you for compiling this list. Since you often post peer-reviewed articles, have you heard of www.researchblogging.org? Once you sign up, it auto-aggregates your posts about these papers to their site, so people can easily find blogs about research. It's an interesting idea.
At 6:32 AM, GMO Pundit said...: Thanks A.

No I hadnt heard of researchblogging and Ill chech it out.
You meant glyphosate of course.
At 6:33 PM, Tom said...: About safety... did you know that bees gather nectar from plants that are genetically modified, they loose their sense of orientation, can’t get back to their apiary and die... If however, they can avoid the GMOs, but come back to the apiary with contaminated pollen (by other contaminants), the “guards” kill them at the entry of the apiary ….
At 8:51 AM, GMO Pundit said...: Well Tom, perhaps you could give the source of your assertions about bees, and explain which particular GM crops you are talking about?