For the third time the EU Commission handed the Amflora dossier back to the EFSA in 2008. This time not only the GMO panel but also the Biohazard panel are asked about their opinion. And after months EFSA announced that they would need more time to come to a conclusion because two of their experts have a different opinion then the rest.
Somehow that shouldn't really surprise anybody. "Risk assessment" is not a hard science but - as the term says - an assessment without strict tick boxes to decide what's safe or not. And over the years scientists came to different assessment of using the antibiotic marker gene nptII in GM crops in general and in the GM potato Amflora.
BASF considered it safe, so did the EFSA GMO panel, while experts in some EU member states did not. In 2007, EMEA concluded that assumptions of the GMO panel on how the antibiotics in question were used were wrong.
What should surprise however, is that after years of giving scientific opinions, the EFSA has apparently no mechanism to allow for different opinions in its panels.
