Leading European retailers and brands such as H&M, C&A and Tchibo have unknowingly been selling certified organic cotton clothing contaminated with genetically modified cotton from India, in a suspected fraud that is certain to shake consumer confidence in organic. The scale of the alleged fraud uncovered by the German edition of the Financial Times newspaper is shocking - if it’s accurate. Lothar Kruse, a director of the independent testing laboratory Impetus in Bremerhaven, who examined the cotton fabrics claimed around ”30% of the tested samples” contained genetically modified (GM) cotton. The head of the Indian agricultural authority, Apeda, Sanjay Dave, told the newspaper they were dealing with fraud on ”a gigantic scale.”