NOTE: EFSA has now released its final assessment of the Seralini study. It has not changed any of its initial critical responses to the study, which Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) rightly characterizes in its new report (see the extracts below) as resembling "more a compilation of other's criticisms than an attempt to clarify the issue in the public interest; more like a prosecution than an evaluation."

CEO also notes that the final report's conclusions are in stark contrast with the conclusions of at least two of the national regulatory agencies that were also involved in the assessement of Seralini's study which have called for additional research and a review of current risk assessment guidelines.

Instead of a careful and balanced assessment that considered lessons that could be learned, EFSA has chosen, says the report, to fan "the flames of public controversy by publishing a radically one-sided assessment putting the entire blame on Séralini, applying a level of scientific standards never reached by the Monsanto study on NK603 it accepted for its EU authorisation and ignoring some national agencies' calls to more research and a review of GMOs and pesticides' risk assessment guidelines."

What is more, says the report, "EFSA failed to properly and transparently appoint a panel of scientists beyond any suspicion of conflict of interests; and it failed to appreciate that meeting with Europe's largest biotech industry lobby group to discuss GMO risk assessment guidelines in the very middle of a EU review undermines its credibility. Today more than ever, EFSA appears to be in need of radical change to become genuinely independent from the industry it is meant to regulate."
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How EFSA dealt with French GM study: which lessons?
Corporate Europe Observatory, November 29 2012
 http://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/EFSA%20and%20S%C3%A9ralini.pdf

[EXTRACTS ONLY]

The biotech industry has launched an extensive offensive to discredit the study published last September by a team of French researchers suggesting serious concerns about the long term health impact of Monsanto's NK603 maize and the Round-up herbicide it has been genetically engineered to tolerate. As a result, it has been difficult to sort legitimate criticism of the study from industry spin.

Putting this criticism to oneside, the way the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has managed the Séralini case does not meet the standards that should be expected from the "keystone of European Union (EU) risk assessment regarding food and feed safety".

...EFSA's initial review of Séralini's study, published on 4 October, was drafted by EFSA staff. But acknowledging the study's results would have meant invalidating 10 years of EFSA GMO risk assessment.

There are also concerns that some of the staff may themselves have conflicts of interest. One of the staff members involved, Claudia Paoletti from EFSA's GMO unit, for instance published a paper with pro-biotech industry scientists Harry Kuiper and Marc Fellous [the head of the pro-GM AFBV lobby group who was found guilty of libelling Seralini!], as well as former colleague Suzy Enkens who has since been recruited as a lobbyist by Syngenta. Doubts are impossible to lift as things stand since EFSA refused to disclose the Declarations of Interest of the relevant staff members. 

More seriously, one of the two scientists involved in the peer-review of EFSA's paper, Andrew Chesson, contributed to EFSA's positive opinion on NK603 in 2003, a conflict of interest denounced by Corinne Lepage MEP22. Why EFSA's management chose to include these people in the group instead of selecting external scientists without conflicts of interests on the matter is not known. 

As a result, Séralini and EFSA are now in total conflict. Séralini has said he will only publish raw data from his study if EFSA publishes data from the industry studies it used on a public website. EFSA has sent the data to Séralini, but has not made it available to the public and Séralini claims it is incomplete.

...In a nutshell, EFSA's initial review resembles more a compilation of other's criticisms than an attempt to clarify the issue in the public interest; more like a prosecution than an evaluation.

...Remarkably, the EFSA staff (including Paoletti) involved in the review of Séralini's study were invited in a luxury hotel in Brussels to discuss GMO risk assessments at a conference organised by Europabio, the biotech industry's lobby group in Brussels on 24 October. EFSA was represented by Harry Kuiper, the scientist who chaired EFSA's GMO panel between 2003 and 2012 and whose links with industry have been clearly documented. These are now the subject of an Ombudsman complaint made by Testbiotech and CEO28. Suzy Renkens, the former head of EFSA's GMO unit who left to lobby for Syngenta (and who now lobbies for Europabio), was also in the room.

...Finally published on 28 November, EFSA's final assessment of the study did not change any of its initial assessment, but simply added the assessments carried out by six Member States' food safety agencies.

...Again, EFSA has dismissed the study on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to back the conclusions on mortality and tumours, a point that is shared by all national food safety agencies and indeed partly by the authors themselves. It repeats the misleading argument that the glyphosate assessment is not in question, but fails to address the issue that Roundup, not simply glyphosate, was used in Séralini's study. EFSA uses these findings to dismiss the study entirely. 

This is in stark contrast with the conclusions of at least two of the national agencies (from France and Belgium) also involved in the study's assessement which took their public health protection role seriously by calling for additional research and a review of current risk assessment guidelines:

– Belgium's WIV-ISP: "Considering the issues raised by the study (i.e. long term assessment), the Biosafety Council proposes EFSA urgently to study in depth the relevance of the actual guidelines and procedures." (Belgium's food safety experts' conclusions are remarkably split, with a minority opinion asking for "a reassessment of the advice of the BAC on the initial dossiers of the maize NK603, regarding effects on human and animal health, using the same critical analysis that was applied by the BAC's experts to the Seralini et al. study").

– France's ANSES: "ANSES calls for more public funding on the national and European levels for broad-scope studies to consolidate scientific knowledge on insufficiently documented health risks. […] [ANSES recommends] more research on the potential health effects associated with the long-term consumption of GMOs or long-term exposure to plant protection products. This research should focus in particular on the issue of exposure to GMOs and to residues of associated plant protection preparations." (ANSES was the only food safety agency to be given Séralini's raw data on mortality and tumours).

...The way the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has managed the Séralini case does not meet the standards that should be expected from the "keystone of European Union (EU) risk assessment regarding food and feed safety". Instead of meaningfully contributing to the public debate by sorting the bad arguments from the good, and, more crucially, instead of siding with public safety by calling for more research, EFSA fanned the flames of public controversy by publishing a radically one-sided assessment putting the entire blame on Séralini, applying a level of scientific standards never reached by the Monsanto study on NK603 it accepted for its EU authorisation and ignoring some national agencies' calls to more research and a review of GMOs and pesticides' risk assessment guidelines.

What is more, EFSA failed to properly and transparently appoint a panel of scientists beyond any suspicion of conflict of interests; and it failed to appreciate that meeting with Europe's largest biotech industry lobby group to discuss GMO risk assessment guidelines in the very middle of a EU review undermines its credibility. Today more than ever, EFSA appears to be in need of radical change to become genuinely independent from the industry it is meant to regulate.