Organic ‘fraud’: GMO lab clarifies position
01 February 2010
Last week the German Financial Times published and article suggesting that consumers were being badly mislead and that a number of EU retailers' organic garments were contaminated with GM.
The journalist responsible for the article reported that one Germany testing house had found that 30% of the fabric samples routinely screened were positive for GM. The suggestion was that the industry had failed to preserve the identity and integrity of organic cotton and that this may also affect independently certified products.
Following the publication of the article, a number of key players in the organic textile industry were quick to accuse the FT-G journalist of misrepresenting the facts. Anne Gillespie, Director of Industrial Integrity at Organic Exchange was particularly unimpressed, claiming to have been "completely misquoted." Gillespie also denied the existence of a fabled 'internal' OE report which the article suggests indicated 25%-30% GMO contamination of Indian organic cotton. The GM test results outlined in the article were also questioned by Technical Director at IWG-GOTS , Marcus Bruegel. Bruegel explains that “current testing facilities can detect the presence of GMO in organic batches, but are not yet able to quantify the level of contamination." Without knowing the level of contamination it is impossible to gauge whether any contamination detected is accidental (e.g from pollen drift) or as the result of deliberate fraud.
It's now becoming clear that the scale of GM contamination reported is likely to be an exaggeration. In the absence of any suggestion that organic certification systems lack rigour, it looks equally unlikely that any contamination detected was the result of complacency or dishonesty on the part of organic farmers, processors or certification bodies. This situation does however highlight the difficult issue of organic status, namely what to do with farmers and processors, who despite their best efforts to stay non-GM, have been contaminated through no fault of their own.