New Suspicions about GMO

By Hervé Kempf
Le Monde

Thursday 09 February 2006

Do transgenic plants have a negative effect on health? Ever since their commercialization in 1996, the question has agitated circles of experts and ecologists, without any indisputable proof allowing an affirmative response. Now, several recent studies effected by credible researchers and published in scientific reviews tally with one another to throw doubt on GMOs' complete harmlessness. They don't assert that GMOs generate health problems. But at the very least they suggest that GMOs provoke biological impacts that must be more widely studied. This new questioning arises just as the Council of Ministers adopted a proposed law on GMO Wednesday, February 8, and as the World Trade Organization (WTO) handed over an interim report February 7 to the parties in a conflict that opposes the United States, Canada, and Argentina to the European Union on the issue of transgenic plants.