Professor G.-E. Séralini’s team has issued a warning regarding the dangers of using, spreading, and consuming genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticides after finding that long-term consumption of the pesticide « Roundup » and GMOs (in particular those that are resistant to « Roundup ») has a harmful impact on health.

The study carried out by Criigen was published in the Review « Food and Chemical Technology » under the heading « Séralini, G.-E., et al. : Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Round-up tolerant genetically modified maize, Food Chem. Toxicol. (2012) ».

The results of the study immediately provoked a variety of intense reactions, which have not gone unnoticed by the media. There are serious doubts about the independence of institutions responsible for the evaluation of risky biotechnologies and pesticides, and about the quality of the standards that they employ.

A press release from the French organization Info’OGM (GMO Info) issued the following statement : « The doubts raised by G.-E. Séralini’s study are relevant to all past evaluations ». In their view, « the current debate, which is focused on the ‘technico-scientific’ aspects of GMOs, excludes a number of extremely important issues associated with agricultural genetic engineering. »

We are running serious risks by allowing multinational corporations with a near monopoly to distribute products such as pesticides and GMOs in an effort to even further industrialize agricultural production on a continental scale. Attempts to maximize profit lead to potentially dangerous practices that must be firmly regulated ; the world is not a laboratory. Moreover, while Séralini’s study did not address the social and ecological impacts of GMOs and pesticides, they must also be considered.

This extremely serious subject must be viewed through the lens of natural resource governance. It provides yet more proof that it is necessary to improve « scientific » expertise – and, to remove it from private economic influence by evaluating it in genuinely democratic ways.

Below, you can find a short film outlining the principal results from this study. We invite those who are interested in finding out more to visit the website Worldwide GMO Alert.

We also encourage you to visit Info’OGM’s website. This organization has been exhaustively documenting the GMO issue for some years.