Is GM DNA destroyed by processing of animal feed?
Biotech proponents claim that processing animal feed will destroy any GM DNA present. An example of this “nothing to worry about” stance is a letter sent by MAFF’s J.M. Nicholas to one of our readers, John Parfitt.7 Mr Parfitt had written to MAFF expressing his concerns about the lack of labelling on GM animal feed. Mr Nicholas does not share Mr Parfitt’s concern. In his reply, Mr Nicholas refers to Novartis’s GM maize containing antibiotic resistant marker genes: “The government is sensitive to consumer concerns but takes the view that labelling would need to be based on the actual presence in them of GM material. Current advice is that this is unlikely… the majority of the materials used for animal feeding are processed by-products, such as soya meal and maize gluten feed. It is known that some forms of processing disrupt DNA and therefore render it incapable of replication. In the case of one maize product from Novartis, tests were conducted on the maize gluten feed which indicate
