Divorce between scientific community and Macron government is "complete" – Le Monde reports

A report by France's food safety agency ANSES on plants derived from new GM techniques (new genomic techniques, NGT) has been blocked by President Macron's government under political pressure, writes Stéphane Foucart, science correspondent at Le Monde. He calls this "one sign, among others, of the rift between the scientific community and the government".

The report is the second one by ANSES on the EU proposals to deregulate new GMOs. ANSES's first report on the subject was devastating – it concluded that the deregulation proposals lacked any scientific basis.

Foucart points out this is not the first time that those in power have blocked the publication of an expert report – an act that constitutes a "breach of a democratic pact between scientific expertise on the one hand and those in power on the other": "In the autumn of 1997, Nature devoted an uncompromising cover story to the attempts by Claude Allègre, then Minister of Research, to block publication of the expert report on asbestos by the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm)."

Foucart comments, "A quarter of a century has gone by, and the same manoeuvers now appear so normal and benign that their alleged perpetrators no longer even bother to deny them."

He explains that Marc Fesneau, the French Minister of Agriculture, has been in possession of the second ANSES report since mid-January. ANSES had announced the publication of this report at the beginning of February – before the European Parliament voted on the conditions to relax the regulations for these new crops (which they did on 7 February).

Foucart notes that this is a controversial issue, to the extent that open letters signed by hundreds of scientists are circulating, some in favour, others opposed, to the deregulation of new genomic techniques: "It would therefore have been necessary to give MEPs access to proper expertise on the subject to enable them to cast an informed vote. But this didn't happen. According to our information, the ANSES report was blocked under political pressure and, at the time of writing, has still not been made public. We don't know what it contains, but it's highly likely that it's not as enthusiastic as the government, which favours the deployment of these "new GMOs", would have liked."

Le Monde sent questions to Fesneau's office on 8 February. The office did not deny that the ANSES report had been blocked, "merely replying, two reminders and forty-eight hours later: 'No comment for us at the moment.'"

Foucart concludes that "the divorce between the Macron government and the scientific community is now complete". On pesticides, too, the government has turned its back on science: "You only have to scan the 'debates' pages of the newspapers to realise the extent of this disenchantment. On February 7, in Le Monde, nearly 80 researchers from public bodies (CNRS, Inrae, Inserm, etc.), who specialise in the environmental and health impacts of pesticides, denounced the 'shelving of scientific knowledge' on their areas of expertise."

In the newspaper La Croix, 140 researchers opposed the halting of the national pesticide reduction plan, explaining that "the deleterious impact [of pesticides] on health and the environment is not an opinion but a scientific fact".

Citing a study published in the summer of 2023 showing a 95% drop in insect biomass over the past twenty-four years in German arable farming areas, Foucart calls the results "worrying", but adds that "it's even more terrifying to think that those who are deciding tomorrow's agriculture today have no knowledge of them, clearly don't understand their seriousness or, perhaps, don't care at all."