Review 590: New GMOs

Welcome to our latest Review, which focuses on new GMOs, mostly developed using gene editing. Our main focus is on the battles over the deregulation of new GMOs that are rumbling on in the EU and New Zealand (DEREGULATION BATTLES). We also have updates on the mess created by the UK DEREGULATION.

In the EU, talks between the European Parliament, Council and Commission on the Commission’s new GMO deregulation proposal collapsed in June. The Parliament wants a ban on patents on plants derived via new GMO techniques (new genomic techniques, NGTs) and this proved one of the key sticking points in the discussions. In addition, there were disagreements about if or how new GM plants would be labelled, and questions about how many genetic changes should be allowed before a plant would be subject to the more robust GMO regulations. Disagreeing sides are set to return to negotiations in mid-October, with meetings being arranged in the background to try to force an agreement.

In addition, we have important updates on the DETECTION of new GMOs, the PATENTS that threaten farmers and breeders, NEW GMO DEVELOPMENTS, and (inevitable, but maybe sooner than even we expected) a major NEW GMO FAILURE. There’s also a development on the NEW GMO GRAVY TRAIN (read and weep, British taxpayers) and the latest expert commentary on the risks posed by GMO MICROORGANISMS.

DETECTION

DARWIN project policy brief highlights feasibility and importance of detecting new GMOs in food and feed

The first policy briefing from DARWIN, the EU-funded project for detecting gene-edited organisms (NGTs), focuses on the analytical detection of products derived from new GM techniques (new genomic techniques, NGTs). Gene-editing technologies such as TALENs and CRISPR/Cas present regulatory challenges regarding EU standards for transparency, traceability and labelling. The policy brief reaffirms that PCR-based methods remain highly effective for detecting GMOs and can be adapted to detect NGTs when prior knowledge of the modification exists. The document also presents findings from a recent study by DARWIN researchers that has demonstrated the effectiveness of combining whole genome sequencing, public genome databases, and machine learning to identify a minimal set of unique genetic markers or “genetic fingerprint”. This fingerprint enables the unambiguous identification of an NGT line. The key to the success of the approach is that the researchers targeted several key genetic elements that constitute the unique genetic fingerprint of the gene-edited line – not just a single genetic change, which might have occurred naturally by chance. Lobbyists promoting the deregulation of new GMOs have repeatedly claimed that detection won’t work because the changes in new GMOs are indistinguishable from those occurring in non-genetically engineered organisms – something that this EU-funded project gives the lie to.

PATENTS

New GMOs exacerbate patent thicket for farmers and breeders
A complex mix of patents and new genetic engineering threatens our agriculture, according to a new legal analysis by ARCHE NOAH. Different patent rules at different political levels create major legal loopholes. While plants resulting from classical breeding – crossing or selection – are excluded from patentability in Europe, the processes and products of old and new genetic engineering are patentable. “Large corporations combine different methods and claims in their applications in order to obtain patents with the widest possible scope. Abolishing risk assessment for new genetic engineering could further exacerbate this problem,” says Katherine Dolan, seed policy expert at ARCHE NOAH. The organisation has repeatedly pointed out to various political actors that corporations and their patent lawyers have created an impenetrable thicket of patent rules and claims. Now is the time to act.

Farmers’ seeds in danger worldwide!
To mark the harvest festival in Germany (5 October), an alliance of church-based development organisations and farmers’ interest groups presented a harvest crown to Bärbel Kofler, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, with a request to campaign for the protection of seed diversity. The alliance is also calling for no patents on seeds to be authorised. The harvest crown symbolises gratitude towards nature, appreciation of farmers’ work and a good harvest. This is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve for farms in Germany and around the world. Climate change is causing extreme weather conditions, and large agricultural companies are gaining more control over the seed market through patents. Diverse, locally adapted seeds are becoming less available and access is increasingly restricted. In addition, the EU Commission is planning to weaken EU genetic engineering legislation so that GMO-free seed and food production will no longer be possible. “If new genetic engineering is hardly tested and labelled in the EU, if plants can be patented and a few corporations control the seeds, farmers in Europe and around the world will lose control over what they grow,” says Kathrin Schroeder of Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation for Development Cooperation. “They are then no longer free to decide whether a variety suits the soil or climate. Less choice in the field means less safety on the plate: if everyone grows the same thing, one disease can destroy entire harvests – and that ultimately affects us all.”

DEREGULATION BATTLES

Action Alert: EU leaders – protect GMO labelling!
Keep our foods safe and our choices ours! Let’s show EU decision-makers we won’t allow corporate giants to push unlabelled genetically modified foods. Tell EU leaders: Protect GMO labelling! You can sign whichever country you are in, including outside the EU.

Who doesn’t want new GMOs to be traceable and labelled?
Certain big food producers and their interest groups, gathered under the umbrella lobby group FoodDrinkEurope, are adamant there should not be any “additional requirements”, such as traceability and labelling requirements, for new GMOs that are claimed to be “conventional-like”, in the food chain. The same goes for big agrichemical companies, gathered under the lobby group CropLife, which have expressed “strong concerns... about the possible introduction of unjustified, mandatory labelling requirements for conventional-like NGT plants and products”. FoodDrinkEurope members include Cargill, Coca-Cola, Mars, and Kraft-Heinz. Signatories to CropLife’s demand for no traceability and labelling include farming lobby group Copa-Cogeca, biotech industry lobby group EuropaBio, and FEFAC (European Feed Manufacturers' Federation).

Scientific publication on AI-designed “new GMO” maize

The blueprint for an insecticidal GM corn has been published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science. It was designed using artificial intelligence (AI) for the application of new genetic engineering (NGT). A legislative proposal by the EU Commission for the future regulation of NGT plants was used as a guideline. As a result, NGT plants could be placed on the market without mandatory environmental risk assessment. Insecticidal plants can be toxic not only to herbivorous insects, but also pose significant risks to non-target organisms, food webs, ecosystem function, and biodiversity. Under the current EU legislative proposal, NGT plants with up to 20 genetic modifications could be released into the environment and marketed without environmental or health risk assessment. Food produced from these plants would not be subject to labelling requirements. However, there is no reliable scientific evidence that NGT plants that remain below this “magic threshold” of 20 genetic modifications are safer than other plants. The AI specifically designed the insecticidal corn to meet the EU Commission's requirements. The criteria proposed by the Commission were used as a kind of instruction manual to circumvent a mandatory risk assessment.

TV show exposes role of Dutch government lobbying on new GMOs
Five Dutch ministries, led by the Ministry of Agriculture, are playing a key role in lobbying in Brussels for a relaxation of the safety and transparency regulations surrounding GM crops, a Dutch TV programme revealed. This is despite several motions calling on the ministry to advocate for robust frameworks. The analysis of more than a thousand pages of internal documents shows that the ministries are primarily concerned about the competitive position of the Dutch seed industry. Concerns from citizens, members of the House of Representatives, and smaller breeders are being ignored. Under the EU Commission's proposal, any NGT (new GM, “new genomic techniques”) plant with fewer than twenty DNA modifications would be exempt from a comprehensive risk assessment and mandatory labelling. Internal emails between officials in 2023 and 2024 reveal that the Netherlands actively tried to persuade other member states to vote in favour of the proposal. Lists were kept of critical countries that still needed to be convinced. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature (LVVN) also organised a meeting with like-minded member states to discuss their strategy prior to a key vote. The link above is to a Dutch language article; an article in English by Corporate Europe Observatory is here.

Canada Action Alert: Demand mandatory labelling of GMOs
If you are a citizen and/or a resident of Canada, you can sign the House of Commons petition for mandatory labelling of GMOs. Demand transparency and choice!

New Zealand: NZ First Party to block Gene Tech bill unless National Party makes changes
The NZ First Party – part of the country’s ruling coalition – has said it will not allow the New Zealand government’s Gene Technology Bill, which would deregulate many GMOs, to pass in its current form. Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson said the current bill wasn’t what his party had signed up for. The difference of positions over the bill reveals another potential fracture point for the three-party coalition. The coalition agreement between NZ First and the National Party included a commitment to “liberalise genetic engineering laws while ensuring strong protections for human health and the environment”. But the legislation National was now spearheading had gone too far, according to its coalition partner.

New Zealand: Are the Gene Technology Bill appointments just window dressing?
The NZ First Party has said that the Gene Technology Bill in its current form has gone far beyond the safety protections envisaged and they didn’t want it to destabilise the organic food and farming businesses and the wider agricultural sector. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has now introduced some immediate amendments to address public concerns. They have been tasked with setting up a new sector committee. Representatives from Organic Aotearoa New Zealand (OANZ) have been appointed. But Claire Bleakley, president of GE Free NZ, warned: “It is too late to involve affected parties by tinkering around the edges of the defective Gene Technology Bill... [The bill] has to be stopped.”

New Zealand’s Gene Technology Bill is dangerous – organic farmer
Jenny Lux is a certified organic grower and Chair of Soil and Health NZ. She also has a scientific background. In a short video, she calls out the Gene Technology Bill – which would remove whole classes of GMOs from regulatory oversight in New Zealand – for what it is: dangerous and irresponsible. She points out that as well as posing risks to living organisms, the Bill would make organic farmers prove their land is GM-free, but offers no protection if their crops get contaminated.

New Zealand: GM not needed to reduce methane emissions from cows
Why risk contaminating New Zealand with GMOs when nature already has the answers? In a video clip, dairy farmer Paul Bosher explains why Crown Research Institute (publicly funded) scientists are pushing GMOs, even though there are other natural, proven ways to cut methane on farms. Feeding diverse multi-species plants and certain seaweeds are practicaland low-risk solutions that work. Instead, New Zealanders are being sold risky, untested GMO experiments that could harm the environment and export markets. Why? Because there’s no money to be made from natural solutions.

Background to the GMOs/methane con
New Zealand has a lot of livestock, so there has been a big focus on reducing methane emissions, including funding for public (Crown) research, as part of the country’s mission to get to net zero by 2050. As an article on the issue says: “It’s the subject of a huge scientific inquiry in New Zealand”. And the research has included developing genetically engineered methane inhibitors and genetically engineered clover and rye grass cattle feed. So when the government announced last year that it was going to pursue GMO deregulation, it highlighted the supposed potential of genetic engineering to reduce methane emissions. However, this is a con (see above item on the natural, proven ways of cutting methane on farms that are already known about). (No link in header)

Who ’s behind the push for gene editing in Africa?
Across Africa, powerful corporate, donor, and government interests are driving a rapid push to deregulate gene editing in agriculture. A new report from the African Centre for Biodiversity details current regulatory frameworks, country-by-country project updates, and the key funders and institutions backing genome editing on the African continent, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Corteva Agriscience (the DowDuPont spin-off), the US Agency for International Development (as was), and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. It also sets out critical concerns: risks to seed sovereignty and biodiversity, corporate control through intellectual property, and the erosion of precautionary biosafety systems.

UK DEREGULATION

Game-changing gene-edited products coming soon to UK supermarkets due to Brexit? Er... maybe not
According to a GMO-boosterish article in the Telegraph, “Britain’s first genetically-edited (GE) foods will be on supermarket shelves in the new year as a result of Brexit freedoms. Crops which have been genetically edited to be tastier, longer-lasting and healthier will now be legally sold in England for the first time under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023.” The article says that among these products are “bread with less cancer-causing chemicals, longer-lasting strawberries and bananas, sweeter tasting lettuce and disease-resistant potatoes”. What it doesn’t say is that not only are hardly any of them ready for commercialisation, but none of them are necessary or even desirable. They certainly won’t provide any better solution to our food and farming problems than the non-GM solutions already available. Read on to find out why.

A disaster by design: The UK’s new rules for new GMOs
The UK government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act (GenTech Act) was passed in 2023. The GenTech Regulations for plants will come into force in November 2025. It is expected that the deregulation of new GMO animals will follow, though as of October 2025 the timeline for this is unclear. A new report from GM Freeze outlines multiple problems with the new system and why it creates health, environmental and socio-economic risks. The UK’s deregulatory regime also poses a threat internationally, as it’s an area in which regulatory alignment is being sought. This means that other countries are being pressured to accept, and potentially adopt the same, removal of safeguards.

Group that advises on new GMOs tied in multiple knots
The committee that advises the UK government on new GMOs met in July for the first time since the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations were signed into law. The UK is now poised to open up our environment, health and borders to a likely influx of newer forms of GMOs, but it was clear during the meeting that there are problems and disagreement at the committee with key decision-making powers. The Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) has been tasked with deciding whether certain GMOs should be granted “precision bred organism” (PBO) status, which means they will be exempted from labelling, risk assessment and traceability requirements. But the Committee is divided on key issues, including the presence or otherwise of transgenes – in this context, genes introduced from another species.

NEW GMO FAILURE

No silver bullet – pest resistance threatens corn ’s newest GMO defence, study warns
Corn rootworms – pests responsible for billions of dollars in yearly crop losses – are evolving resistance that weakens even the latest biotechnology controls, according to a new study. Drawing on decades of data across multiple states, entomologists found that field-evolved resistance to GM Bt insecticidal toxins is undermining the effectiveness of corn that targets rootworms with the combination of Bt and RNA interference, or RNAi, a new GMO gene-disruption control that turns the rootworms' own genetic instructions against them. The research team analysed field data collected over the past two decades in 12 previous studies, including millions of rootworms evaluated across the Corn Belt. “The results consistently show that in fields where resistance to Bt has evolved, the combination of Bt and RNA interference provides less protection from rootworm damage,” said Bruce Tabashnik, lead author on the study and head of the University of Arizona Department of Entomology. “This isn’t lab data,” he added. “This is real-world, on-the-ground field data gathered from university and industry research across multiple states.” The study is here. (Note: link in header may not work in your country)

NEW GMO DEVELOPMENTS

Mars teams up with gene editing company to develop GM cocoa
Chocolate company Mars has teamed up with the gene editing firm Pairwise, which is in a strategic allience with Bayer, with the stated aim to “futureproof cocoa crops using gene editing”, by making them more climate change-resilient and less prone to disease. In GMWatch’s view, it won't work, as focusing on single or a few genes is too reductionist. What’s needed is a systems approach. We’ve been told by a prominent person in the chocolate industry that the root cause of the current cocoa crop collapse is overuse of nitrogen fertilisers. This makes the cocoa trees grow fast and produce large numbers of beans – but it also causes weak growth that is low in the strengthening substance lignin, resulting in trees that are highly prone to fungal infection and pest attacks. In response, farmers spray fungicides frequently, which, however, destroys soil health and reduces the plants' production over the longer term. The industry insider’s solution? Stop using nitrogen fertiliser. Production will decrease for a while and prices will go up, but in time both will recover.

NEW GMO GRAVY TRAIN

British Sugar secures £660k of taxpayers’ money for gene editing research on sugar beet
British Sugar has secured over £660,000 in grant funding from the Government, which, in conjunction with its own funding, “will further its research into how gene editing can be used to benefit the British sugar beet crop”. The funding, from Innovate UK’s Farming Futures R&D Fund, which was awarded jointly to British Sugar, agricultural biotechnology company Tropic and the John Innes Centre, will pay for research on gene editing to try to develop Virus Yellows resistance in sugar beet. The British Beet Research Organisation – the UK’s beet sugar industry’s research centre – will also support the project. GMWatch notes that the gene editing technique used will be RNAi gene silencing. To learn about the risks, which include silencing the genes of non-target animals and consumers, see this paper.

GM MICROORGANISMS

GM microorganisms pose huge challenges for risk assessment and governance
A review by researchers from Environment Agency-Austria, Austrian Academy of Sciences and the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation identifies critical biosafety and wider governance risks of environmental applications of genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs), including those developed by genome editing. It focuses on two case studies of commercialised applications: 1) GM microalgae for biofuel production and 2) GM soil bacteria for increased nitrogen fixation. The review says GMMs are “fundamentally different to GM higher organisms”, raising specific challenges. Their microscopic size complicates detection of their environmental presence, hindering assessment and monitoring of their survival following intended or accidental release. Bacteria and microalgae also readily exchange DNA via horizontal gene transfer, raising the risk of spread of both intended and unintended engineered sequences and traits. Moreover, bacteria are capable of rapid genetic change, with the potential for evolutionary adaptation, providing “new opportunities to evolve, adapt, and spread”.

INTRODUCTION TO GM

GENE EDITING MYTHS, RISKS, & RESOURCES

GMWatch News Review archive

Review 590: New GMOs

Menu

Resources

Contacts