EU split on deregulating gene-edited food as Council deadlock persists

A discussion on a final proposal by the Belgian Council Presidency to resolve deadlock on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) legislation was removed from Wednesday’s (26 June) EU ambassadors’ meeting agenda as it failed to convince some member states, notably Poland.

The decision came after EU governments could not reach necessary majority to adopt a common position on NGT rules, sources from the Belgian Presidency told Euractiv on Tuesday.

Poland’s Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski announced a day earlier the country was unlikely to support the law despite efforts from the Belgian Presidency to address concerns over the patentability on NGT crops.

“We did not have enough time to analyse the impact of this proposal,” Siekierski told journalists at a Monday’s meeting of agriculture ministers in Luxembourg.

Securing Warsaw’s support would have been enough to break the stalemate and move forward with the proposal.

Despite recent efforts from EU policymakers to harness the potential benefits of novel genomic technologies, loosening rules on NGTs remains a contentious issue.

Italy’s first-ever field trial of an NGT crop, a genetically modified version of Arborio rice with enhanced resistance to blast, a devastating disease, was recently launched by a team led by plant scientist Vittoria Bambrilla at the University of Milan. 

The severe drought that hit Italy in 2022 prompted the government to seek solutions to make crops more resilient and approve new legislation to facilitate NGT field trials, which was not possible until then. 

However, the plantation was vandalised last Friday (21 June), just a month after the start of the trial.

”The farmer called me early on Friday morning… they destroyed everything,” Bambrilla told Euractiv, explaining that the plants were pulled from the water and cut into pieces.

“But we knew this could happen,” she added.

A polarised affair

These acts of vandalism are reminiscent of early 2000s activities by environmental groups such as France’s “faucheurs volontaires,” who pledged to destroy all test plots of Genetically Modified (GM) crops.

While GMOs involve introducing DNA from a different species through a process known as transgenesis, NGTs modify the organism’s existing genes or use genes from the same species without introducing foreign DNA.

The faucheurs have also opposed new rules for NGTs, arguing that they pose the same environmental and health risks as traditional GMOs, citing a 2024 report by the French Food Safety Agency (ANSES).

However, ANSES’ findings clash with those of the Belgian Superior Health Council, which concluded that while NGT plants undergo genetic changes, they are “very different” from GMOs and do not pose additional risks.

Christophe Clergeau, a re-elected member of the European Parliament who worked on the NGT dossier in the past term, stressed governments should not adopt a position on the new rules until the EU’s Food Safety Authority (EFSA) publishes its opinion on the ANSES report, due in July.

A GM-free continent

Despite the scientists behind the CRISPR-Cas9 method, the most well-known NGT, awarded a Nobel Prize in 2020, these techniques remain tightly regulated in the EU, as they must follow GMO legislation.

The burdensome risk assessment and traceability requirements imposed by the EU’s 2001 GMO directive, along with member states’ reluctance to adopt these technologies, mean that EU fields are virtually free of gene-edited crops.

The 2001 legislation has also prevented the development of NGTs in Europe since 2018 when the EU’s top court ruled that the directive should apply to all new gene-editing methods.

The only exemption is insect-resistant GM maise developed by agrochemical giant Monsanto (now Bayer), which has been grown in Spain and Portugal since 1998.

Nevertheless, more than 40 field trials involving genome editing are underway in the EU, the UK, and Switzerland, according to the plant scientists’ network EU-SAGE database.

These crops would have easier access to the EU market if lawmakers endorse a the Commission’s proposal to loosen rules on NGTs, as many of them would be considered as “equivalent” to conventionally-bred plants.

Not the same

“People generally don’t really understand the difference between the Genetic Modification (GM) and the one based on CRISPR-Cas9, which is the main tool behind NGTs,” said Silvio Salvi, a plant genetics professor and the president of the Italian Society for Agricultural Genetics.

In a 2021 opinion, the European Commission’s ethics group in science acknowledged the persistent public concern regarding GMOs, including a lack of public dialogue and informed debate.

Eighteen EU countries chose to “opt out” of cultivating GMOs in all or part of their territories in 2015 after the European Commission allowed governments to ban genetically modified crops even if they are approved at the EU level.

For Salvi, the right approach is to “forget about GMOs,” which the European society has never welcomed, and focus on the development of NGTs through new EU legislation that can help agriculture tackle current challenges related to climate change.

While the researcher warned that the potential of these methods should not be exaggerated, he stated that NGT crops are proven to improve crop resistance to parasites by tweaking a single gene.

The text is likely to be stalled at the Council for at least a year, as the Hungarian and Polish presidencies are expected to make little progress on the file.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Alice Taylor]

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