Europe should regulate new genomic techniques as GMOs

IFOAM Organics Europe, the European regional body of IFOAM - Organics International, called on the ministers of agriculture and environment of the EU Member States and the EU Commission to safeguard producers and farmers’ capability to produce without GMOs and allow consumers to choose what they eat. The existing GMO regulation is fit to achieve these goals and already allows research on and marketing of GMOs if the applicable rules are respected. This was also confirmed by a 2018 ruling of the European Court of Justice.

According to the organic movement, transparency on using genetic modification should continue to apply all along the food production chain. At EU level, contrary to the Commission study’s outcomes, weakening the regulation of these technologies would actually contradict the objectives of the EU Green Deal and the EU Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies. Globally, this would mean the EU yields to the agroindustry’s pressure to deregulate certain GMOs in Europe, losing its place as example of a continent on which GMO-free production is possible and dominant.

It is incoherent that the Commission envisages to jeopardize the development of existing agronomic solutions put forward in its own Farm to Fork strategy to incentivize genetic modification technologies in agriculture and food with at track record of unfulfilled promises.

As history has shown, promises of producers heralding GMOs and ‘New Genomic Techniques’ as alternatives to pesticide-tolerant crops should be treated with caution. The claim that NGT would contribute to the EU Green Deal and Farm to Fork strategy’s objectives is based on assumptions about potential crops that could be developed in the future and not on those (few) crops that are market ready or in the application process [i]. Mere promises of expected benefits do not justify a weakening of the EU’s standards with regard to environmental protection and farmers’ and consumers’ choice. Safety checks for new genetic engineering techniques are essential, as a proper risk assessment is necessary to assess the potential risk to health and the environment of a particular genome-edited crop on a case-by-case basis.

Rather than depending on and hoping for silver bullet solutions such as GM crops, Europe should upscale concrete and well-defined agroecological practices with proven benefits for biodiversity and soil quality. Organic farming is already implementing a wide range of practices to make our food and farming systems more resilient to pests and diverse environmental conditions, as well as extreme weather events linked to climate change while reducing the dependency on synthetic pesticides.

In the next step, the Commission will present their plans to the Ministers of the Member States at an Agriculture Council meeting on 26-27 May, to members of the European Parliament and stakeholders. National positions on how new genetic engineering techniques should be regulated will be crucial in the coming months to decide whether the Commission will go ahead with its suggested plans to develop a new and specific legal framework for “novel genomic techniques”.