Why EU GMO law must be fully applied to the so-called ‘New Plant Breeding Techniques’
The European Commission is considering whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that have been produced through a range of new techniques should be excluded from the European Union’s GMO regulations.
Biotechnology companies want to apply these techniques to engineer plants and animals
for use in industrial food, biomass and biofuel production. They argue that these new methods to directly modify the genetic make-up of living organisms fall outside the scope of EU GMO regulations.
This would mean that there is no risk assessment, labelling and monitoring of GM organisms produced by the new techniques and their derived products. The Commission has announced that it will present a legal analysis on the matter by the end of March 2016.
Joint position_New techniques of genetic engineering_March 2016-1