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Cibus’s oilseed rape should be classified as a GMO under European law, according to the findings of a scientific report

US biotech company Cibus’s oilseed rape, developed with a technique called oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis (ODM), should be classed as a GMO under European law, according to the findings of a report by Prof Jack Heinemann of the Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety, New Zealand – see summary below.

The authors of GMO Myths and Truths agree with Dr Heinemann in saying that Cibus’s ODM crop is a GMO and should be regulated as such. You can buy the updated and condensed edition of GMO Myths and Truths here.

Cibus has promoted its oilseed rape crop as non-transgenic and as “all natural”, with “none of the health and environmental risks associated with transgenic breeding”.

Cibus and the rest of the GMO lobby are trying to convince European authorities not to classify the products of ODM as GM. In that way, they would escape GMO regulation and labelling.

The European Commission has delayed publishing its legal opinion on whether new breeding techniques should be classed as GM and thus fall within the scope of the GMO regulations. However, Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis has recently stated, “The Commission is considering to finalise such legal analysis in the course of 2016” (video, from 43:44).

Is oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis (ODM) a technique of genetic modification?

Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety, 30 October 2015
http://www.inbi.canterbury.ac.nz/research.shtml

INBI was commissioned by Greenpeace International to provide a scientific opinion on whether the use of oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis (ODM) was a technique of genetic modification as described by the current European Union regulations.

The full report is available here:
http://www.inbi.canterbury.ac.nz/research.shtml
“Expert scientific opinion on the status of certain new techniques of genetic modification under Directive 2001/18/EC”

Summary

DNA and RNA are nucleic acids. Nucleotides are the components of nucleic acids. Short chains of nucleotides, called oligonucleotides, have been used for genetic engineering for decades. Until recently, this was done outside of the organism and reintroduced afterward, causing a genetic modification (GM) of the organism. This use was historically considered recombinant DNA work covered by GM regulations in the United Kingdom and then later in the European Union.

Techniques allowing oligonucleotides to create new combinations of genetic material within (in vivo) an organism became available progressively since well before the 2001 EU regulations on GM were written. However, it is this in vivo use that has caused some to consider techniques that are based on oligonucleotides to be ‘new techniques’ and to not have been anticipated by the regulations.

This report finds that in all ways that made the use of oligonucleotides subject to the regulations before 2001, they should remain covered when used in vivo. Oligonucleotides are recombinant nucleic acids in the way recombinant was commonly understood by the scientific and scientific regulatory community. The effects of their use leads to the formation of new combinations of genetic material which are propagated by the organism. The scientists leading research and discovery of oligonucleotides that can direct genetic modifications routinely refer to their use as a form of genetic engineering.

As composed in 2001, the EU GM regulations are scientifically and semantically consistent with the inclusion of all oligonucleotide-based techniques used to modify heritable characters of organisms.