The European Food Safety Authority’s panel on Genetically Modified Organisms has released its opinion on Monsanto’s controversial MON810 maize, currently the only GM crop licensed for planting in the EU.

The EFSA GMO panel, after looking at evidence from the 2010 growing season, concluded that MON810, which is engineered to resist pest insects by producing the BT toxin, does not pose a threat to the environment or human health. However, the EFSA did say that evidence supplied by the Post-Market Environmental Monitoring report, had methodological shortcomings.

News of the EFSA’s pronouncements will come as a blow to France, which recently renewed a ban on MON810 on environmental grounds, following a lengthy legal dispute over the crop. The French government’s ban is based on EFSA studies of another type of GM maize, but the French government said conclusions could be equally applied to MON810, which is sold as YieldGuard.

Although France, the EU’s number one agricultural producer, is at the centre of the debate over the controversial maize, other European states have also elected to ban the crop, including Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, France, Luxembourg and Bulgaria.

The EFSA report is available here.

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