GMO Myths and Truths

Therefore GM crops are likely to contain higher levels of specific pesticides. 49 Yet the public
cannot see the studies that form the basis of pesticide approvals. In Europe, all that is
accessible to the public is the report on the industry studies drawn up by the authorities
of the “rapporteur” member state, responsible for liaising between industry and the EU
authorities for the application for authorization of that particular pesticide. 83
This secrecy was challenged in a 2012 court case brought by Pesticide Action Network
Europe and Greenpeace Netherlands to force disclosure of the industry studies on
glyphosate. Astonishingly, however, the German court prioritized commercial interests over
public health and ruled that the studies must remain secret. 84
Industry and the US government design the GMO regulatory
process worldwide
Agricultural biotechnology corporations have lobbied long and hard on every continent to
ensure that the weak safety assessment models developed in the US are the norm globally.
Working through the US government or groups that appear to be independent of the GMO
industry, they have provided biosafety workshops and training courses to smaller countries
that are attempting to grapple with regulatory issues surrounding GMOs. The result has
been models for safety assessment that favour easy approval of GMOs without rigorous
assessment of health or environmental risks.
For example, a report by the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) described how the Syngenta
Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the agricultural biotechnology corporation
Syngenta, worked on “a three-year project for capacity building in biosafety in sub-Saharan
Africa”. The Syngenta Foundation’s partner in this enterprise was the Forum for Agricultural
Research in Africa (FARA), a group headed by people with ties to Monsanto and the US
government.
The ACB identified the Syngenta Foundation/FARA project as part of an “Africa-wide
harmonization of biosafety policies and procedures” that would “create an enabling
environment for the proliferation of GMOs on the continent, with few biosafety checks and
balances”. 86
In India, the US Department of Agriculture led a “capacity building project on biosafety”
to train state officials in the “efficient management of field trials of GM crops” 87 – the first
step towards full-scale commercialization. And in 2010, a scandal erupted when a report
from India’s supposedly independent national science academies recommending release
of GM Bt brinjal (eggplant/aubergine) for cultivation was found to contain 60 lines of text
copy-pasted almost word for word from a biotechnology advocacy newsletter – which itself
contained lines extracted from a GMO industry-supported publication. 88
Regulatory failures around the world
There is a constant stream of revelations about the lack of competence, objectivity,
and transparency of GMO regulatory bodies around the world. Individuals who sit on
GMO regulatory bodies are frequently found to have conflicts of interest in the form of
GMO Myths and Truths 76