you would would tend to think the seed companies would have been falling over themselves to get their GMO seeds into the hands of independent scientists so all the claims made by their own scientists about GMOs' alleged benefits with minimal environmental impacts could be verified and acknowledged by independent third parties.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of old farmer MacDonald's duck pond.........
EU’s Pro-Industry GMO Regulators Endanger Public Health Petition for Independent Science in GMO Risk Assessment The European Commission (EC) is pandering to the commercial aspirations of the biotech corporations while putting the health of European citizens at risk from genetically modified (GM) products that have never been adequately assessed, said Dr. Brian John of GM-Free Cymru in the UK <1>.
John made his accusation in person at the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels on 26 April 2010. His view is widely shared by independent scientists who have submitted evidence to the European Food Safety Authority on many occasions only to be persistently ignored (see <2> GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham , ISIS scientific publication), and worse, find themselves the target of a concerted campaign of vilification <3> ( Defend Gilles-Eric Seralini and Transparency in GMO Risk Assessment! , SiS 46) .
SNIP
John (and many other scientists), NGOs and consumer groups, have been trying for years to introduce trustworthy and transparent scientific assessment procedures into the European GMO approvals process to no avail.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which provides scientific advice to the EC, routinely bases its “opinions” on highly selective publications and biased scientific dossiers assembled by the applicants that have not been peer reviewed or independently verified (emphasis added /JC). Not surprisingly, many EU member states disagree on scientific grounds with the opinions of the EFSA. When that happens, the EC issues consents, even where there is substantial scientific uncertainty about the safety of the GM products concerned.
snip
The EFSA's GMO panel is heavily biased towards the “facilitation of consents” at the expense of protecting the public, John said; and
independent research into GM safety is routinely blocked by the biotech multinationals through the simple device of refusing access to their patented GM seeds and other reference materials (emphasis added /JC) (A group of research scientists in the USA made the same charge to the US Environment Protection Agency in 2009, see <7> Corporate Monopoly of Science , SiS 42) . Further, access to research dossiers and data sets is routinely denied to independent researchers, with EFSA and the Commission implementing "commercial confidentiality" rules against the public interest.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMO_Risk_Assessment.php IMHO, We are trusting these profit driven, agri-business multi-nationals to do what is right re. the widespread introduction of GMOs into the environment at our own peril.