The academic behind the study that linked GM maize and the weedkiller Roundup to tumours in rats has hit back at the “Jekyll and Hyde” science of the regulators who were quick to discredit his research.

“The agencies that criticise our study’s statistical weakness have never demanded from industry a 10th of the data that they now instruct us to provide them with,” Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini wrote in Le Monde. He said the EFSA had accepted safety tests of 90 days or less on groups of four or five rats for the market approval of the Amflora potato.

EFSA said last month that Seralini’s paper was of “insufficient scientific quality”. It publishes its final assessment shortly.