According to the German-language version of the Financial Times, the Swedish enthusiasm for genetically modified cotton is found in the Swedish fast-fashion brand H&M and other well-known European brands C&A and Tchibo. This behavior was forbidden for fraud and did not meet the relevant standards for genetically modified organisms.

According to the German-language version of the Financial Times, the Swedish enthusiasm for genetically modified cotton is found in the Swedish fast-fashion brand H&M and other well-known European brands C&A and Tchibo. This behavior was forbidden for fraud and did not meet the relevant standards for genetically modified organisms.

In an independent laboratory in Bremerhaven, director Lothar Kruse stated that 30% of the GM cotton fabrics sent for inspection were problematic. These contaminated cotton will be sent back to India. According to the report of the Organic Products Exchange, more than 50% of the organic cotton in the world is from India. In 2009, there were only 107,000 tons of organic cotton sold in the country.

However, Sanjay Dave, the head of India's Ministry of Agriculture, said in an interview with the newspaper that the amount of goods involved was large and that fines were now being borne by third-party inspections such as EcoCert and Control Union.

Who is responsible for this?

With the development of genetically modified crops around the world, there are more and more things that have not been applied to cross-border cooperation in the use of genetically modified products. For this incident, H&M and other fashion companies should also bear certain responsibilities. They have insufficient supervision over overseas supply chains and are not vigilant enough. H&M and C&A need to take action to reduce losses.

A spokesperson for H&M said that they are aware of the seriousness of the problem because it also caused the company’s organic product line sales to decline. At the same time, C&A also stated that it will conduct a more in-depth investigation of this issue.

However, a representative of H&M insisted in an e-mail to Ecouterre that the company had no reason to believe that the organic cotton used in its clothing had grown from transgenic seeds, and criticized the Control union for its loose supervision.

The spokesman quoted APEDA’s statement that after the Control union conducted surprise inspections of Indian organic farms, none of the farms used genetically modified seeds, and all farms took appropriate steps to ensure that genetically modified seeds were not used.

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