On Wednesday 8 February, the EU’s agricultural organisations and cooperatives (Copa-Cogeca) welcomed the content of the European Court of Justice’s judgment of the previous day on the status of ‘in vitro’ random mutagenesis under the GMO Directive (2001/18) (see EUROPE 13116/21).
“European agriculture needs to access the benefits of innovation to be more sustainable and achieve the ambition as set out in the European Green Deal”, commented Copa-Cogeca. Plant breeders should be able to consider certain mutagenesis techniques in their breeding programmes, reducing by some 10 years the time to market, explain the farming organisations.
In its judgment, the Court stated that mutagenesis techniques are excluded from the scope of the directive, Copa-Cogeca summarised. They are “looking forward” to the European Commission’s proposal on new genomic techniques (NGTs), that is expected “before the summer break”.
The European Coordination Via Campesina, on the other hand, is very worried, and has said that the EU Court of Justice has “opened the door to a massive flood of unlabelled and un-assessed GMOs in farmers’ fields and on European citizens’ plates and to the appropriation of all cultivated biodiversity through the patents of a handful of transnational corporations”.
The case before the Court pitted several associations – including the Confédération Paysanne – against the French government. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)