Most corn hybrids grown in the US are genetically modified to resist certain pests or to tolerate certain herbicides. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the nutritional value of corn that is genetically modified for pest resistance, but there are no published reports about feeding corn that has been modified for both pest resistance and insecticide tolerance to pigs. Investigation into the nutritional value of such corn is, however, warranted, because the use of crops with multiply stacked traits is rapidly increasing; approximately 35 million acres of crops with double- and triple-stacked traits were planted in the United States in 2006.

Two experiments were, therefore, conducted to determine if the nutritional value of corn grain with multiple genetically modified traits is different from that of nontransgenic corn. The hypothesis in both experiments was that pigs fed transgenic corn would not differ in growth performance or carcass characteristics from pigs fed nontransgenic corn.

Stein, H. H., D.W. Rice, B. L. Smith, M. A. Hinds, T. E. Sauber, C. Pedersen, D. M. Wulf, and D. N. Peters. 2007. Evaluation of corn grain with the genetically modified event DAS-59122-7 fed to growing-finishing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 85(Suppl. 1):512-513 (Abstr.)  Link to abstract (.pdf)

Everts, A., H. H. Stein, D. Peters, C. Pedersen, K. Sweeter, D. Wulf, and R. Maddock. 2005. Feeding field peas to market pigs had minimal effects on carcass composition, meat quality or cooked pork palatability. Pages 12-13 in Proc. 51^st Intl. Cong. Meat Sci. Technol., Baltimore, Maryland, USA, August 7-12, 2005 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Stein, H. H., D.W. Rice, B. L. Smith, M. A. Hinds, T. E. Sauber, C. Pedersen, D. M. Wulf, and D. N. Peters. 2009. Evaluation of corn grain with the genetically modified input trait DAS-59122-7 fed to growing-finishing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 87:1254-1260. Link to full text (.pdf)