The paper "Possible consequences of the overlap between the CaMV 35S promoter regions in plant transformation vectors used and the viral gene VI in transgenic plants" by Nancy Podevin and Patrick du Jardin—published in GM Crops & Food, 3(4), 296-300 (October/November/December 2012)—has this last week become the basis for a public controversy about certain aspects of the safety of foods containing or derived from GM ingredients. It has been pointed out that wider discussion of the issue might be hampered by the fee hitherto levied for downloading this paper. In order to facilitate such discussion, the publishers of GM Crops & Food have placed the paper on open access; it may accordingly be retrieved without charge from http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/gmcrops/article/21406/.