Shortly after the GMO Panel published its opinion on the renewal of Bt maize MON810, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Europe published a joint report criticizing the opinion as 'woefully inadequate.'
In a reaction, EFSA first released a statement clarifying and ratifying some of the mentioned points, and then invited them to a scientific discussion on 2 October 2009.
The three NGO representatives Janet Cotter (Greenpeace), Werner Müller (Global 2000/FoE) and Helen Holder (Friends of the Earth Europe) met with five members of the GMO Panel to discuss not only MON810 but also LL Rice 62 and EFSA’s review of long-term environmental risk assessment and its review of the environmental impacts of herbicide tolerant GM crops.
One of the arguments raised was the issue of the putative recombinant protein a recombinant protein in MON810 maize (Rosati et al 2008).