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OB qe NV EW GE/GM CROPS COULD END ORGANIC FARMING a” fter hearing of a farmer's observations that mice appeared unwilling to eat GE/GM grain if given a choice, 17-year-old Dutch undergraduate Hinze Hogendoorn decided to investigate further. He obtained 30 female six-week-old mice from a her- petology centre (these rodents were bred to be fed to snakes) and some rodent feed mix with cereals and oatmeal specified to be "GM- free". He also bought some GM maize and soya. The mice were let loose in big cages with two piles of food—one GM and one non-GM—stacked in four bowls. Overwhelmingly, the mice showed a preference for non- GM grains over GM food. Interestingly, the mice did not like eating the soya meal, whether GM or non-GM. Hinze then conducted a series of other tests to find out what would happen when the mice were force-fed with GM foods. The group fed GM ate more, but they gained less weight. By the end, they actu- ally lost weight. In contrast, the group fed non-GM ate less and gained more weight, continuing to gain weight until the end of the experiment. That was not the only difference observed. The mice fed GM food "seemed less active while in their cages". The dif- ferences in activity between the two cages grew as the experiment progressed: the mice in the non-GM cage were in the exer- cise wheel more often than those in the GM cage. The most striking difference was that the mice fed GM food were "more distressed" than the other mice. "Many were running round and round the basket, scrabbling desperately in the sawdust, and even frantically jumping up the sides—something I'd never seen before. For me, this was the most discon- certing evidence that GM food is not quite normal," said Hinze. Another "interesting result" is that one of the mice in the GM cage was found dead at the end of the experiment. Hinze's report was presented to the Dutch Parliament on December 11, 2001, and can be found at the website http://Awww.talk2000.nl. (Sources: The Ecologist, June 2002; Dr Mae-Wan Ho's report at her website, hitp://www.i-sis.org.uk) Oo2" farming will be forced A out of production in Britain and across Europe if genetically engineered/modified (GE/GM) crops are grown commercially, says a startling new EU report. The report—which is so contro- versial that top EC officials tried to stop its release—shows that organ- ic farms will become so contami- nated by genes from the new crops that they can no longer be licensed or farmers will have to spend so much money trying to protect themselves that their farms will become uneconomic. Conventional non-GM farms will also be seriously affected. Drawn up as a result of two years of studies in Britain, France, Italy and Germany, the report provides the most damning confirmation to date of the arguments, long advanced by environmentalists, that it is not possible for GM and organic farming to co-exist. The report, which looks at the effects of growing modified maize, potatoes and oilseed rape commercially on several types of farms, warns that genes from GM crops will travel long distances, creating superweeds. And in Canada, there is confirmation of something canola farmers have been saying for years: that genetically modified canola is popping up where it wasn't planted and where it isn't wanted. An Agriculture Canada study suggests the problem is in the seeds. More than half of the seed samples tested showed some level of GM presence. The study's authors conclude that means almost every canola field planted with conventional seed will contain some genetically modified seed. (Sources: The Independent, May 26, 2002; http://www. independent.co.uk; CBC News Online, June 28, 2002; http://cbc.ca/sto - ries/2002/06/27/gncanola020627) "This computer projection says that in 20 years’ time, water-fuelled cars will be perfected. That computer projection says that in 20 years’ time, the scarcest resource will be water." 6 = NEXUS MICE REJECT GM FOOD! www.nexusmagazine.com AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2002