The Issue:
The Austrian study published by the Austrian Ministry of Health in a preliminary report (Velimirov et al., 2008) is summarized by the main scientific author Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zentek as follows:
“Mice fed with GM maize had less offspring in the third and fourth generations, and these differences were statistically significant. Mice fed with non-GM maize reproduced more efficiently”.
The study makes several unconfirmed claims and has not been published in a peer reviewed journal.
Prof. Jürgen Zentek himself declares his study as a preliminary draft which needs to be scrutinized and does only partially delivers conclusive results (personal communication 2008).
1. Summary:
The Austrian study which has been prematurely published as a report by the Austrian government does not stand to the review of peer experts. The principal scientist Prof. J. Zentek himself declares the study as a preliminary draft with partially inconclusive results, which needs to be corrected in some points. He is not happy with the present situation and the premature press conference of the Austrian ministry, and particularly he is refuting the conclusions drawn by Greenpeace, requesting the immediate retraction of GM maize in Europe, since there is a real risk that consumers of this maize could become sterile.
Andrew Apel, webmaster and author of http://www.gmobelus.org, a new and excellent website, provides a lot of information, summarizing the case in several features and giving ample background information and lots of links. The study has been refuted by Monsanto in several statements, recently also by EFSA (European Food Safety Authority)
A German text can be found under the newspoints, written by Jan Lucht, on the Internutrition website http://www.internutrition.ch/in-news/point/nov08.html
For more text click: http://www.ask-force.org/web/AF-5-Austrian-Micestudy/AF-5-Austrian-Experiment-20100407-web.pdf
For the background of the story see: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-5-Austrian-Micestudy/AF-5-Austrian-Exp-Background-20090828-web.pdf
for a feedback, email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), you can get on special request open source versions of both texts for private use
