Nearly
half the experts at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) still
have financial conflicts of interest with the food industry! That's what
we found after spending weeks analysing the 211 declarations of
interest published by these scientists - we're publishing our new
report, "Recruitment Errors", this morning.
It doesn't mean that
these experts are bad, but it does mean that EFSA still doesn't take
its independence from the food industry very seriously. And we know that
independence matters!
It's important, because the agency's
Management Board is to adopt new independence rules next June 21, and as
far as we're aware the current draft will not close the loopholes that
are enabling this situation to persist. The European Parliament asked
for these loopholes to be closed for four years in a row now, though...
Here's our report.
