EFSA chair resigns over conflict of interest

Diána Bánáti leaves EFSA to rejoin International Life Sciences Institute Europe.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has demanded that Diána Bánáti resign as chairwoman of its management board because she is rejoining the board of the International Life Sciences Institute Europe (ILSI), a research and advocacy organisation for food science. She is to become the executive and scientific director at ILSI.

Bánáti was the centre of controversy in 2010 when it was revealed that while chairing the EFSA board she also held an undeclared position on the board of ILSI. José Bové, a French Green MEP, demanded her resignation from EFSA, saying that her ILSI position was in conflict with EFSA’s role approving foods in the EU, including genetically modified (GM) organisms.

ILSI, he said, lobbied for the interests of the food industry and promotes GM crops. Embarrassed by the revelation, EFSA told Bánáti she could not serve in both positions. Bánáti resigned her position with ILSI in order to stay on the board of EFSA.

Christoph Then of Testbiotech, an anti-GM research group, condemned the reappointment. “This shows that Bánáti never really left ILSI,” he said. “EFSA has had somebody on the management board who had a massive conflict of interest without saying it. This shows that the composition of the management board needs much more attention from the European Commission.”

Incompatible positions

In a statement released on Wednesday (9 May), EFSA said it had requested Bánáti’s resignation after learning about her return to ILSI, which is to be announced officially by ILSI tomorrow (10 May). The EFSA statement said the second position was “not compatible with her role as member and chair of the EFSA management board”.

There have been numerous allegations by environmental and health campaigners of conflict of interest within EFSA or overly close ties between EFSA and the biotech industry. Last month the authority admitted to the European ombudsman that it had not properly responded to the case of Suzy Renckens, the former head of EFSA’s GM unit, who left EFSA in 2008 and moved directly to a lobbying position with biotechnology company Syngenta. There have also been allegations that Harry Kuiper, who chaired the GM panel at EFSA for nearly ten years, had strong ties with ILSI.

Currently there is controversy over the European Commision’s nomination of Mella Frewen to the EFSA board. Frewen, who in the past worked as a lobbyist for US biotechnology company Monsanto, is director-general of FoodDrink Europe.

EFSA has maintained that it would not be possible or responsible to bar anyone with food industry ties from serving at the authority. In its statement, the authority stressed that the management board “has no power to review EFSA’s scientific outputs nor to influence their adoption procedure, which is the sole responsibility of EFSA’s scientific committee and panels”.

Tomorrow (10 May) the European Parliament will vote on whether or not to approve EFSA’s spending in 2010. A hold has been put on it by the Parliament’s budget committee because of concerns over conflict of interest.