On Thursday 27 February, IFOAM Organics Europe said that the latest draft compromise text on the legislative proposal on ‘new genomic techniques’ (NGT) contained “severe deficiencies with worrisome consequences” for European breeders, farmers and the food industry.
The compromise text suggested by the Polish Presidency of the EU Council would leave European breeders and farmers unprotected against patent applications and would leave the EU agri-food industry “with insufficient means to safeguard their entrepreneurial freedom” (see EUROPE 13587/8).
According to Jan Plagge, President of IFOAM Organics Europe, “at the very least, patent claims should not extend to genetic material that can also be obtained by conventional breeding or that is occurring in nature, and the text does not even clarify this aspect”.
Eric Gall, Deputy Director of IFOAM Organics Europe, told Agence Europe that patents associated with NTGs would amount to “privatising genetic resources, in contradiction with the European model of varietal selection based on more flexible intellectual property rights that allow the circulation of genetic resources to produce seeds”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)