Did the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) appoint scientists who are too close to the biotechnology industry to its panel on genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? In an analysis published on Thursday, September 5, the German NGO Testbiotech severely criticizes the agency based in Parma (Italy) and estimates that nearly half of its new group of experts on GMOs, installed at the beginning of July for the next five years, has a conflict of interest.
The issue is sensitive for several reasons. On the one hand, because EFSA’s expertise on “new GMOs” – obtained using new genomic techniques (NGT) – forms the basis of the European Commission’s projects, which want to deregulate these new plants. And on the other hand, because the scientific opinions expressed on the subject diverge completely. Adopted in June, EFSA’s latest opinion, in favour of a broad deregulation of these crops, thus goes against the opinions formulated by French experts from the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES) and the official environmental agencies of Germany and Austria.
According to Testbiotech, seven of the sixteen experts on EFSA’s new GMO panel are “actively engaged in the development of genetically modified plants, some of which are obtained by ‘new genomic techniques’.” Five of them are or have been involved in industrial projects with the firms Limagrain, Syngenta or Corteva, adds the NGO in its analysis. Five are listed as inventors of patents filed by the industry; six are, or have been, stakeholders in lobbying activities in favor of biotechnologies, most of them in connection with the deregulation of plants from NGT.
Lobbying activities
“We carefully assess the interests of all our experts in accordance with our independence policy, which is recognised as one of the strictest of any public body in Europe.we are told at EFSA. If we find a potential conflict of interest during our checks, we apply strict measures to exclude the expert from any related scientific work. But it is important to emphasize that having an interest does not necessarily imply the existence of a conflict of interest.
The European agency adds that it publishes all the declarations of interests of its experts, a transparency policy thanks to which “NGOs like Testbiotech are able to review our work”However, the German NGO claims to have also identified in several cases lobbying activities not mentioned in the declarations of interests published by EFSA.
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