New European food safety guidelines affirm methodology, findings of Seralini's GM corn lab rat study

Thursday, August 22, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: food safety guidelines, Seralini study, GM corn

(NaturalNews) After vehemently criticizing a researcher's groundbreaking study and inappropriately calling into question the validity of his rigorous scientific research methods, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has made a surprising about-face. According to new reports, the agency recently vindicated Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini's published paper on the long-term health damage caused by eating Monsanto's genetically-modified (GM) NK603 corn, affirming that the study is, in fact, valid.

As reported by GMOSeralini.org, the EFSA's indirect approval of Prof. Seralini's study comes as the agency issues new guidelines for how long-term feeding studies are to be conducted in the European Union (EU) moving forward. Believe it or not, the EFSA, which is essentially Europe's version of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is modeling these guidelines after the very same ones that Prof. Seralini used to show that GMOs cause organ failure and cancer.

As you may recall, the EFSA came out like an attack dog following the publishing of Prof. Seralini's controversial study back in 2012, claiming that he failed to apply appropriate research methodology in his work. As previously pointed out by GMWatch.org, these claims were completely unfounded and hypocritical, as none of the industry-backed safety studies used by the EFSA to approve GMOs applied these standards, either.

But now the EFSA is essentially admitting that Prof. Seralini was right all along, and that his research methods are, in fact, more robust than currently accepted methods. So, the agency is adopting many of them and making them official standards for modern food safety research, which is a major victory not only for Prof. Seralini's work, but also for the entire independent research community that seeks truth rather than corporate propaganda.

"This is a fascinating document which largely validates the methodology and choices of Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini in his 2012 study on GM maize NK603 -- methodology and choices that EFSA and countless other critics previously attacked him for," explains GMOSeralini.org about the release of the EFSA's new guidelines.

You can review these new guidelines for yourself by visiting:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3347.htm

EFSA affirms almost every research method used by Seralini

Some highlights from the new EFSA guidelines include a pronouncement that the type of rat species used by Prof. Seralini, the Sprague-Dawley (SD) rat, is, indeed, appropriate for use in long-term food safety studies. Prof. Seralini had previously been criticized for using SD rats in his study, but according to the EFSA, SD rats are fitting for this type of research.

The EFSA also now agrees that long-term food safety studies do not necessarily need a narrow and fixed hypothesis, another criticism that was levied against Prof. Seralini's work. Since GMOs themselves are still technically a novelty as far as the scientific literature is concerned, constructing studies in a more "exploratory" fashion, just like Prof. Seralini did, is completely acceptable.

The new EFSA guidelines do much more than just exonerate Prof. Seralini's work, however. They also take aim at the misguided use of historical controls in safety testing, a practice often used by Monsanto and others to essentially arrive at pre-determined outcomes. According to the EFSA, historical control data "should be considered with caution," as it can lead to false outcomes.

"Overall, we're pleased to see EFSA taking on board our cautionary lessons on spurious 'reference' control groups and historical control data (even if in the same document EFSA subsequently allows the use of both), as well as validating the aspects of Seralini's experiment that he was most criticized for."

You can read a review of the major points of the EFSA's new guidelines by visiting:
http://gmoseralini.org

Sources for this article include:

http://gmoseralini.org

http://www.gmwatch.org

http://www.efsa.europa.eu

http://science.naturalnews.com