European Food Safety Authority

This article is part of the Foodspin project of Spinwatch.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) describes itself as:

the keystone of European Union (EU) risk assessment regarding food and feed safety. In close collaboration with national authorities and in open consultation with its stakeholders, EFSA provides independent scientific advice and clear communication on existing and emerging risks.^[1]

GMO Panel

The GMO Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) assesses new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for approval in Europe and reports to the European Commission, which then submits its decision to the European Council. In the event that the Council cannot reach a qualified majority for or against authorisation, the matter is sent back to the Commission, which is free to authorise the GMO based on a special regulatory procedure called comitology.

The EFSA has never given a negative opinion on a GMO put forward for approval, whatever the scientific concerns about its safety.^[2] In July 2009 it gave a positive opinion even on Monsanto's GM maize MON810, which is banned for health and environmental reasons in six EU Member States as allowed under EU law.^[3]

Criticism of GMO Panel

Dr Arpad Pusztai is an internationally renowned scientist who conducted groundbreaking research into the safety of GM potatoes and was fired and gagged when he found problems and spoke about them on British television. In an email to GMWatch (dated 10 August 2008) on the tenth anniversary of his 15 seconds of TV fame, he wrote of GM food safety and the EFSA's GMO Panel:

On this anniversary I have to admit that, unfortunately, not much has changed since 1998. In one of the few sentences I said in my broadcast ten years ago, I asked for a credible GM testing protocol to be established that would be acceptable to the majority of scientists and to people in general. 10 years on we still haven't got one. Instead, in Europe we have an unelected EFSA GMO Panel with no clear responsibility to European consumers, which invariably underwrites the safety of whatever product the GM biotech industry is pushing onto us.

Monsanto's GM maize in EU

In 2004, EFSA approved feed and food use of Monsanto's GM Roundup-ready maize NK603 in 2004, and its cultivation in the EU in 2009.

French scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini's study on rats being fed with NK603 showed that the rats tested with Roundup died earlier than their control group, developing severe tumours and kidney and liver pathologies. The rats only fed with the GM maize also developed tumours. EFSA is criticized for having based its assessment on a narrow range of studies that tested rats for a short period of only 90 days. Séralini pointed out that in his research most of the tumours among the rats he studied only appeared after the first year.

According to CEO, more than half of the GMO panel experts who signed the approval for this GM maize had links with industry resulting in conflicts of interest, as defined by the OECD.^[4]

GMO Panel members

Joe Perry, Chair

Patrick du Jardin, Vice-chair

Gijs Kleter, Vice-chair

Salvatore Arpaia

Andrew Nicholas Edmund Birch

Hilde-Gunn Hoen-Sorteberg

Christoph Tebbe^[5]

Former GMO Panel members

Harry Kuiper (Chair), Sirpa Kärenlampi (Vice-Chair), Hans Christer Andersson, Detlef Bartsch, Josep Casacuberta, Howard Davies, Gerhard Flachowsky, Annette Poeting, Jeremy Sweet, Atte Johannes von Wright, Jean-Michel Wal

Conflicts of interest on EFSA's management board

In March 2011 Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) highlighted in a report that at least four members of EFSA’s management board are employed by or otherwise linked with food industry lobby groups and other commercial interests, a situation that creates conflicts of interest. These board members are: Matthias Horst (director general of the German food industry lobby BVE), Milan Kováč (director of International Life Sciences Institute Europe), Jiří Ruprich (Danone Institute) and Piet Vanthemsche (farmers’ lobby COPA and Agri Investment Fund).^[6]^[7]

Resignation of Diána Bánáti

Diána Bánáti was appointed member of the EFSA Management Board in June 2006, re-appointed for a second term in 2010 with a 4-year mandate, and elected Chair of the Management Board in October 2010.^[8] She resigned from EFSA on 08 May 2012, informing it of her decision to take up a professional position at the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a body which acts on behalf of numerous food and biotech multinationals, including Danone, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.^[9]

A report by the parliament's budget committee, issued before Ms Banati's resignation, raised questions about her links with ILSI, going back to 2010, that said she had "failed, in 2010, to declare her membership of the Board of Directors of the ILSI". It called the EFSA board's scrutiny of its members' declarations of interest "insufficiently rigorous and detailed".^[10]

The EFSA insisted that Hungarian Professor Bánáti has had no influence or control over the organisation’s decision on food or crop safety issues. EFSA has been criticised to have allowed her remain in her EFSA position for so long, despite the fact that it has been known for a long time that she had connections to the GM industry and the wider food industry through ILSI.

Green MEP José Bové stated that the conflict of interest in her role with ILSI made her position as EFSA chair completely "inappropriate and untenable".^[11]

ILSI denies being an industry lobbying body. It describes itself as a "non-profit, worldwide organisation whose mission is to provide science that improves public health and well-being."^[12]