Peer reviewed ASK-FORCE AF5a Contribution Klaus Ammann, em. Prof. University of Bern, Switzerland

1. General View
For years, Austria’s governmental and politically motivated claims against the adoption of GM crops have repeatedly been rejected by European Commission officials, by scientists with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and by the judges of two European courts and by numerous scientists.

Government regulators and numerous safety scientists have rejected Austria’s claims about GMOs as well as the country’s attempts to retard EU policy and evade the requirements of European law and decisions.  Austrian ministries (as well as their counterparts in the French and Italian governments) have adopted novel tactics that were invented, suggested and endorsed by anti-GM activists.
As a result, the global media is regularly fed questionable claims based on reports which have not gone through the process of peer review, or – worse – which have passed a flawed peer-review process – examples given in (Miller et al., 2008).  Some journals have accepted papers on the premise that because of the publicity given to studies in the media and on websites, the work should be published so that everyone has a chance to scrutinize the findings (Horton, 1999; Horton et al., 1999).  And, unfortunately, it is also true that lower quality journals accept papers that would be found unacceptable by leading journals – here a few examples to illustrate the whole range of cases given above:

•  Short letters to the editor, written by whistle blowers in good faith – or worse in many of the below cases – with a political agenda - on ‘promiscuity of transgenic plants’ (Bergelson et al., 1998) or the toxicity of Bt maize for non-target insects like the monarch butterflies (Losey, 1999; Saxena et al., 1999), but later devaluated as premature apprehensions.
•  Critical scientists conducting experiments which do not respect the internationally agreed experimental procedures, so actually the results are questionable. But it has to be said that the authors were commenting their own results in a balanced way the possible negative effects by leaving open other causes than transgenesis (effects of transgenic soybeans on mice by (Malatesta et al., 2003; Malatesta et al., 2005; Vecchio et al., 2004)).  Nevertheless, this work is often misinterpreted by opponents who make no mention of the researchers careful qualifications of their findings and certainly no mention of the questionable methodology.
•  Publications by scientists who have a clearly negative view of GM crops that conduct research intended to reveal highly improbable negative effects.  The research protocols and experimental conduct are flawed and the differences they make publicity about are usually not of biological significance or are not even statistically significant. (Seralini et al., 2007), critical comment see (Doull et al., 2007)  (Ewen & Pusztai, 1999), contradiction see in the same Lancet volume: (Kuiper et al., 1999).
•  Publications on topics related to epigenetics neglecting zero comparisons, although the findings per see are correctly commented, but in a balance not giving the whole picture. (Myhre et al., 2006), (Latham et al., 2005). for contradiction see Jens Freitag in GMO Safety.
•  Uncritical reviews by newcomers in the field of food safety (Dona & Arvanitoyannis, 2009),  for contradiction see (Auer, 2008)  and Sorghum (Botha & Viljoen, 2008) who do not understand some of the cited scientific publications seemingly supporting their negative cause of extensive gene flow and worse: ignore important scientific work as reviewers.
•  Papers based on new methodological approaches, not following the internationally agreed protocols, which have to be interpreted with great caution and which need to be independently verified (Finamore et al., 2004; Finamore et al., 2008).
•  Prematurely published reports propagated on numerous websites of the anti-gene-technology-community and in sensational newspaper articles, without having been scrutinized properly by peer-review (Ermakova, 2005a, b, 2007a, b; Marshall, 2007; Marshall et al., 2007). When Ermakova finally revealed her data, it was clear that the research and data did not meet contemporary international standards of experimentation. The high observed mortality of rats in control groups was attributed to mistreatment of the animals.

For a critique on the actual experimentation in the Austrian mice study see http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-5-Austrian-Micestudy/AF-5-Austrian-Experiment-20090828-web.pdf

See full details about Pusztai, Ermakova and Dona in the contributions of ASK-FORCE :

About the case of Pusztai:
http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-2-Pusztai/Pusztai-Food-Safety-20090828-web.pdf

About the case of Ermakova:
http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-4-Ermakova/AF-4-Ermakova-20090828-web.pdf

About the Dona Review:
http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-7-Dona-rebuttal/Ammann-et-al.-Rebuttal-Dona-AF-7-20090828-web.pdf

for more text, click http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-5-Austrian-Micestudy/AF-5-Austrian-Exp-Background-20090828-web.pdf

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