GMO – The AFBV found guilty of slandering against G.-E. Séralini

On Tuesday January 18, the court of Paris has concluded the lawsuit between Gilles-Eric Séralini, researcher in molecular biology at the University of Caen and President of the Scientific Council of CRIIGEN [1], and the French Association of Plant Biotechnologies [Association française des biotechnologies végétale] (AFBV), chaired by Marc Fellous. The court sentenced the AFBV to a fine on probation of 1,000 EUR, 1 EUR for compensation (as demanded by the plaintiff) and 4,000 EUR of court fees. Corinne Lepage, president of CRIIGEN, contacted by Inf’GMO on the telephone, was first of all delighted by this victory, the more so as she stressed that she was not optimistic when leaving the first court session which had been held on November 23, 2010. “One cannot any longer tell what ever one wants about whistleblower,” she says. And she adds: “It is the first time that a whistleblower is not in the defensive but in the offensive”. G. – E. Séralini had challenged the association and its president before court on the grounds that they had defamed his research work which called into question the harmlessness of several transgenic maize varieties of Monsanto [1]]. The AFBV had indeed on several occasions sought to discredit the work of G.E. Séralini.