Monsanto will halt production of genetically modified corn in all of Europe, except Spain, Portugal and Czech republic. The agribusiness multinational states not to spend any more money on trials, development, marketing, court cases or anything else to get GM corn accepted in Europe.
.....Two years later, in January 2011, Monsanto expanded these two years of examination with an additional year of testing, which was accepted by the Danish Environmental authority, Miljøstyrelsen.
The procedure is that crop companies’ new crops will be tested by the authority for two years before possibly being allowed for selling and growing in Denmark. At the time, Monsanto wanted to test a total of five different varieties with the transformation NK603.
Trial results are normally open to the public. In this case Monsanto explicitly asked to keep the test silent, and they withdrew the varities before the testing finished, so no results were published.
No information has then been released on these trials.
Authorities support Monsanto on silence
The authorities have – after more than two months consideration – decided to follow Monsanto’s wish to keep the trial results silent.
Key documents in the FOI-case.
The main argument is that publication of the
trial results would have an economically harmful effect on the company, despite the fact that the crops did not pass the trial.
Investigative Reporting and Åbenhedstinget together raise the case for The Danish Ministry of Agriculture. From a scientific viewpoint and for the use in other countries it is necessary to also get results of failed trials published, argue the two organisations.
“It is corrupting to the scientific method itself, when companies can decide that only positive results can be published. Therefore it is important to have this research published,” stresses Klaus Sall.
