After years of intense lobbying, negotiation, and semantic gymnastics, it’s official. Europe is set to open its farm gates and plates to new genetic technologies, without the guardrails of labelling, monitoring, or liability. Natasha Foote breaks down exactly what this means and what’s next.
In a final showdown vote on Wednesday (17 June), lawmakers in the European Parliament finally gave the greenlight to loosen Europe’s rules on so-called new genomic techniques (NGTs), a subset of genetic modification that will now be permitted to sidestep Europe’s current legal framework.
What has been decided?
The approval officially brings us two new flavours of genetically altered crops – imaginatively called NGT 1 and 2, each with their own approval paths.
NGT plants considered equivalent to conventional ones (so-called ‘NGT 1’ plants) would be exempted from the requirements of the EU’s GMO legislation, while category 2 NGT plants would still have to follow stricter requirements. (see diagram below)
Crucially, lawmakers chose not to include a ban or restriction on patents for NGT 1 crops, despite a last minute push to bring back the position that had originally been a hard red line for the European Parliament amid concerns this could drive corporate control and trapping farmers and breeders in a ‘patent minefield’.
Meanwhile, NGT 1 plants require no specific environmental risk assessment, and while seed bags require labelling, there is no requirement for food product labelling or methods of detecting NGT plants.
Under the deal struck, no NGTs will be allowed in organic production but the “technically unavoidable presence of NGT-1 plants would not constitute non-compliance”, according to a statement from the Parliament. The Commission has also been tasked to “assess whether this regulation creates any administrative, economic, or practical burdens for organic operators”, including for their consumers.
The rules will apply both to plants originating in Europe and to those imported.
Goodbye to seed sovereignty?
The result, which comes after years of intensive lobbying, and has been met with rapturous applause from the agro-industry, which heralded the news as a step towards the future for farming.
Farmers groups such as Copa-Cogeca and EU young farmers association CEJA also celebrated the decision as a win. Both have long argued that the innovation is needed to ensure production in a changing world and keep Europe in a competitive race with biotech-friendly nations like the US, Canada or Japan, despite initially holding significant reservations over the patenting question.
Their positions have put them at odds with organic and small farmers. Peasant farming organisation European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) has lambasted the EU for “betray[ing] farmers, consumers and seed SMEs, giving up on its food and seed sovereignty and sacrificing the GMO-free sector”.
For their part, organic umbrella group IFOAM said this was a “step backwards for biosafety, transparency and freedom of choice” but pointed to “important safeguards,” such as the prohibition of NGTs in organic production.
Meanwhile, civil society groups such as Friends of the Earth Europe lamented the vote as a ‘sad day’ for European democracy which “abolishe[s] basic rights we should have as consumers, breeders, farmers, processors in the food sector”.
“A majority led by the European People’s Party and the far-right clearly chose the profits of a few biotech multinationals over farmers’ right to know and choose what they grow in their fields [and] our right to know and choose what we put in our plates,” the group wrote.
‘Battle lost, but the war is not over’
Yet, for those championing seed diversity, such as ARC2020 board member and head of office at Save Our Seeds, Benedikt Härlin, the battle might be lost but the war is not over. “What today’s vote makes legally possible – the marketing of genetically modified crops without labelling and without further safety testing – has by no means been accepted by farmers and consumers,” he pointed out in a statement.
“Today’s disregard for the wishes and concerns of the vast majority of the population could therefore once again prove to be a decisive mistake,” he said, adding that “clandestinity has never been a successful strategy for persuasion”.
Meanwhile, others are also gearing up to continue the fight, recalling how previous attempts to approve GMOs have “ultimately gone down in history as milestones in the public rejection of genetic engineering in food and agriculture”. “The vote is finished, but our movement goes on!” ECVC wrote.
The regulation will now enter into force 20 days after it has been published in the EU Official Journal, with a two-year transition period foreseen.
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