With negotiations on the proposal governing new genomic techniques (NGTs) set to resume on 3 December, 25 EU agri-food organisations asked the European Parliament on Tuesday, 25 November, not to impose further restrictions on businesses (see EUROPE 13752/5).
These organisations are concerned that the progress that NGTs could bring seems to be “blocked by political demands that go beyond the scope of the original Commission proposal”. The institution was aiming to establish a regulatory procedure for verifying the equivalence between conventional-like plants developed using NGTs and those resulting from conventional breeding or natural mutations.
The signatory organisations—which include Euroseeds and Copa-Cogeca—maintain, “Subjecting such products to additional sustainability requirements, traceability and labelling rules, or extensive monitoring plans all erodes the scientific base of the proposal, limits the potential and efficacy of the use of the technologies and resulting products, and places the EU-approach in opposition to those of all other countries with respective legislation already in place.”
Further details: https://aeur.eu/f/jmo (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)