Scientists, organisations, and representatives of political parties call on Greek MEPs to vote against deregulation of new GMOs. Report: Claire Robinson
An event on the risks and impacts that new genetically modified plants will have on health, the environment, the economy, and society, titled “Our Food at Risk: The Hidden Promotion of GMOs” was held in Athens by Greenpeace Greece and the Sito and AEGILOPS seed and biodiversity networks on 7 May.
About 100 people – including GMWatch co-director Claire Robinson – attended the event, which took place in the Athens Cultural Centre, and listened to presentations by scientists, organisations, and representatives of political parties regarding the risks and impacts that the planned deregulation of new GM plants will have on health, the environment, the economy, and society.
Until recently, Greece opposed GMOs, but in early 2025, the current Greek leadership shifted toward supporting the deregulation of new GMOs in the EU, marking a significant departure from the country's historic opposition.
At the start of the event, Myrto Pispini, programme manager at Greenpeace Greece, welcomed the audience and looked back on past actions by the organisation and civil society regarding the first generation of GMOs 30 years ago. She highlighted “the false promises made by major agrochemical companies that GMOs would eliminate global hunger, reduce the use of chemicals, and increase production,” emphasising that none of these promises have actually come true.
Next, the agronomist Dr Kostas Koutis, director of AEGILOPS (Greek Network for Biodiversity and Ecology in Agriculture), highlighted the successful efforts of organisations and civil society in opposing the first generation of GMOs, as well as the strength of the current alliance of organisations and groups against new genetically modified foods. At the same time, he called on everyone to join the fight so that together we can protect citizens’ rights, food, and the environment.
New GMOs must be labelled
The author and environmental researcher Vasso Kanellopoulou, a board member of the Sito seed saving network and the panel’s moderator, emphasised the need for Greek MEPs to protect citizens and the environment by voting against the new proposed legislation. She said, “We are asking Greek MEPs not to support the EU’s new proposal on genetically modified organisms, because it abolishes rights such as safety and transparency rules that were secured 25 years ago. We want labelling requirements for GMOs to remain in place.”
Menelaos Gardikiotis, an agricultural biotechnologist and president of the Greek Chamber of Agricultural Engineers (GEOT.EE), said that crops resulting from new genomic techniques pose a threat to organic and conventional agriculture.
“Our farmers and our natural environment will become guinea pigs,” he said, adding that “If Greece’s policy is truly to promote high quality products, genetically modified crops have no place in this plan.” He warned of the dangers of farmer dependency on patented seed (new GMOs, like first-generation GMOs, are patented). Finally, he emphasised that the “concept of equivalence between a conventional plant and one that has undergone up to 20 genetic modifications, as introduced by the proposed regulation, is not based on specific scientific data, but is an arbitrary legal/political construct.” Therefore, he said, there is no justification for abolishing risk assessment, as is planned for the vast majority of new GMOs.
Panagiotis Kalofonos, a spokesperson for the Union of Working Consumers of Greece (EEKE), emphasised that there will be no risk management or controls for new GMOs, adding that food labelling satisfies a fundamental consumer right to information, allowing consumers to make informed, safe, and healthy choices when shopping. “According to European and national legislation, food products must bear clear information, ensuring freedom of choice,” he added.
The discussion continued with Michael Antoniou, Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Toxicology at King’s College London. He said new genomic techniques (NGTs), as they are called, are just a new generation of genetic modification techniques and are totally different from natural breeding methods: “You grow plant cells in labs and genetically modify them using GM tools, and then grow a new plant. This procedure is being ignored in the deregulation plan.” He said that this is dangerous, because the procedure introduces new risks that conventional breeding does not. “The CRISPR/Cas9 technique being used will inevitably have side effects that are being ignored, even though it is known that they will occur.”
Gene editing is not precise
On the claims of precision for gene editing, Prof Antoniou said: “The CRISPR/Cas gene editing tool is used to make a targeted change to a gene. But the genetic engineer is not fully in control of the change that happens. You can get small or large changes. So even at the site where you are trying to target the change, you can create new proteins that may be unsafe. There will also be other changes at many other sites in the genome. The unintended damage to the DNA happens through the procedure. The procedure can produce hundreds or thousands of sites of unintended DNA damage – and this is where the danger lies. You will always have unintended damage: it is simply a question of how much.
“This has been demonstrated with gene-edited rice in a 2018 study by Chinese scientists. They compared gene-edited rice with naturally bred rice. They found the gene-edited rice had far more DNA damage than the changes from breeding. Why worry about this? Because the damage will change gene function in unintended ways that could make the plant toxic or allergenic.
“In another study, scientists found major changes in the proteins of gene-edited rice plants compared with the parent.” However, the study design did not allow any conclusions to be drawn on the health implications.
Prof Antoniou continued, “Those pushing for deregulation say if you can convince yourself that an NGT plant could arise naturally, we should not regulate it and it will be safe. But there is no evidence that any gene-edited product could be produced naturally. The EU’s current GMO regulation is process-based – it considers the genetic modification process as a whole, as well as looking at the final product.” However, the deregulation proposal would implement product-based regulation only and ignores the process by which the product was made. Prof Antoniou said, “Process-based regulation is vital because the process informs you not only how you achieve what you want, but also where things can go wrong. Process- and product-based regulation together is the only science-based way to regulate NGT products.”
Deregulation criterion “ridiculous and arbitrary”
Regarding the threshold of no more than 20 intentional genetic modifications, below which an NGT plant would be deregulated, Prof Antoniou said, “This is ridiculous and arbitrary. The danger is that these 20 modifications can be any type, large or small. And when we consider the process as a whole, no NGT product will pass this deregulation criterion. This is why they are ignoring process. The combination of intended and unintended changes will lead to large changes in composition and gene function, but no one will look for them. I have never come across anything so unscientific as this deregulation criterion in all my years in academia.”
Commenting on new GM (NGT) plants already out there in the marketplace, Prof Antoniou said: “Some of them are herbicide-tolerant, so they will increase herbicide use. Globally, there are very few commercialised NGT plants – in Japan there is a gene-edited tomato containing a tranquilliser-like substance. In the US a few years back a gene-edited soybean was released but it did not grow well and farmers abandoned it. This bad performance is not surprising because gene editing is damaging to the genes of the plant. On the level of food safety, this genetic damage can alter the biochemistry of the plant and give rise to novel toxins and allergens.”
Regarding the hype surrounding new GM plants, Prof Antoniou said: “There are a lot of promises but they don’t translate to reality. We are told NGTs can produce plants resistant to drought and that have a high yield, but they will fail.” This, he explained, is because desirable traits like these are genetically complex, involving whole families of genes working together, and cannot be conferred by manipulating one or a few genes.
Patents one of the greatest risks
Costas Bouyioukos, an agronomist and professor of bioinformatics at the Université de Paris Cité, warned about the effects of patented new GMOs, which he said presented “one of the greatest economic, ethical, and environmental risks. The genetic material of all life forms on the planet constitutes a global intangible cultural heritage.”
Under the new deregulatory regime for new GMOs, a handful of companies will be “able to patent any organism at will” and “seek compensation even from farmers who cultivate and protect wild, old, and extremely important varieties for biodiversity and food security and development”. He said big agribusiness companies like Corteva and Bayer dominate patent ownership of NGT plants. And they also make agrochemicals, so NGTs will increase dependency on agrochemicals.
When it comes to transparency, he said labelling is not enough: risk assessment and full transparency throughout the supply chain are needed, as well as a ban on patents. Otherwise, corporate control will increase in food and farming.
Kostas Arvanitis, a Member of the European Parliament from the Left Group, said that the EU is deceptively rebranding deregulation as “innovation”. He emphasised that the new legislation serves only corporate lobbies and reiterated that the official position of the Left Group opposes the deregulation of new GMOs.
Following the experts’ presentations, a discussion ensued with the audience, who shared their views on the topic and posed questions to the experts.
The event was held with the support of the Deputy Mayor’s Office for Civil Society and Entrepreneurship of the City of Athens.
Press coverage of the event included: