The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Health and Food Safety (ENVI) gave the floor to experts, on Monday 10 May, on the ‘new GMOs’ resulting from the latest biotechnologies in the food sector, in an attempt to better understand the impact of new genomic techniques (NGT) on health and the environment.
Published a few days ago, the European Commission’s study showing that the current legislation governing the marketing authorisation of GMOs (Directive 2001/18/EC) is not adapted to NGTs, prompted this hearing (see EUROPE 12709/17, 12690/17).
This was an opportunity for the European institution to clarify its intention, while recalling that this study had been the subject of a broad consultation of all stakeholders.
“The Commission believes that there is sufficient information available for policy action specifically on plants derived from targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis: the aim will be to have proportionate regulatory control that would allow human and animal health and the environment to continue to be protected while benefiting from innovation”, said the institution’s representative. This will be the subject of an extended impact assessment, but before that, the Commission wants to launch a broad debate.
A section of the study, dedicated to the potential benefits, gives an overview of the applications made by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC): these NGTs can make plants resistant to pests, to climate change, can improve the nutritional content of vegetables and can make the animals that eat these plants resistant to certain diseases (see EUROPE 12710/10). These NGTs can also be used for micro-organisms, in cosmetics and in the pharmaceutical sector.
“They can help us develop vaccines and treat patients”, the Commission representative stressed, without mentioning the Covid-19 vaccines by name.
On the concern side, the representative listed the potential environmental risks, but also the coexistence of these products with conventional non-GMO and organic products, and the importance of labelling these GMOs for consumers.
“Some believe that the benefits are hypothetical. There are differing views on security. But EFSA has found that mutagenesis and targeted cisgenesis for plants have the same safety profile as conventional plants”, said the Commission representative.
A strong supporter of the new genomic technologies, Dr. Michael Antoniou, Reader in Molecular Genetics at King’s College London, said that GMOs are organisms modified in such a way that they do not involve altering natural reproduction, according to the legal definition which refers to the process, not the end product.
This genetic modification procedure involves transgenesis, the modification of genes or the targeted introduction of a new gene. “Chemical alteration is excluded. By definition, it is safe. Some would like the legislator to focus on the end product and not on the process. But for me, this goes against science. Small changes in basic DNA units in a plant or animal organism cannot cause random mutation”, he said.
In contrast, Dr. Margret Engelhard, Head of Division for the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) pointed out that biotechnology is undergoing profound transitions due to genome editing tools, digitalisation, artificial intelligence and automatisation.
This is a dynamic field in which tools change fast, with the CRISPR/Cas technique as a prime example, she noted.
According to her, “the genomes of organisms can now be shaped, redesigned and even shuffled to a revolutionary new extent, no matter whether foreign genes are introduced or not, (while) on the other hand, knowledge about the effects of these genetic changes in the organisms and the ecosystem is limited”.
And to stress that the development of impact assessment tools is not keeping pace with these biotechnological developments.
To complete the picture, an expert hearing was held on Tuesday 11 May on the impact of these new technologies on animal welfare. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)