A sad day for democracy and science 

Before the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment vot­ed today on the dereg­u­la­tion of new genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops, our team spent two days on the ground in Stras­bourg.

Monday’s meet­ing of the Envi­ron­ment Com­mit­tee (ENVI) already gave a hint of the direc­tion the debate would take. Under the watch­ful eyes of numer­ous lob­by­ists from the agri­cul­tur­al and biotech indus­tries, a com­pro­mise was rushed through that reduces trans­paren­cy, weak­ens pro­tec­tion stan­dards, and fur­ther increas­es the influ­ence of patents on seeds.

Numer­ous com­mit­tee mem­bers were replaced by alter­nates at the last minute, and key amend­ments were not put to a sep­a­rate vote. Instead of an open polit­i­cal debate, the impres­sion was one of a process designed pri­mar­i­ly to con­ceal con­flicts with­in the major polit­i­cal groups.

On Tues­day, we demon­strat­ed in front of the Par­lia­ment along­side 200 farm­ers, bee­keep­ers, breed­ers, envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, and con­sumer groups against the planned dereg­u­la­tion. Our team deliv­ered the demands of more than 600,000 cit­i­zens from across Europe: Main­tain label­ing, ensure trans­paren­cy, and lim­it patents on seeds!

Despite these warn­ings and despite con­tin­ued strong pub­lic sup­port for label­ing and safe­ty test­ing of new genet­ic engi­neer­ing, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment vot­ed today in favor of far-reach­ing dereg­u­la­tion.

Comment by Benedikt Haerlin, Coordinator of Save Our Seeds

Fol­low­ing today’s vote in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, after a two-year tran­si­tion peri­od, there will no longer be any spe­cif­ic safe­ty assess­ments, labelling require­ments for food and ani­mal feed, or trace­abil­i­ty in the envi­ron­ment for most genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops. Exclu­sive patents can grad­u­al­ly under­mine plant vari­ety rights and their open-source rules regard­ing the free use of vari­eties for fur­ther breed­ing.

The genet­ic engi­neer­ing lobby’s most recent suc­cess­es at EU lev­el in 1996 and 2008 have ulti­mate­ly gone down in his­to­ry as mile­stones in the pub­lic rejec­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in food and agri­cul­ture. We will be work­ing towards that out­come again this time. What today’s vote makes legal­ly pos­si­ble – the mar­ket­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops with­out labelling and with­out fur­ther safe­ty test­ing – has by no means been accept­ed by farm­ers and con­sumers.

Its the law, bro — but does it sell?

Over 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion wants new genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms to be labelled and safe­ty-test­ed just as the old GMOs. Today’s dis­re­gard for the wish­es and con­cerns of the vast major­i­ty of the EU-pop­u­la­tion could there­fore once again prove to be a deci­sive mis­take. Save Our Seeds and many oth­er organ­i­sa­tions will con­tin­ue to inform farm­ers and con­sumers – includ­ing the retail sec­tor – which prod­ucts con­tain GMOs. Clan­des­tin­i­ty has nev­er been a suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy for per­sua­sion. The ‘GMO Broth­ers’ at Bay­er, BASF, Chem­Chi­na-Syn­gen­ta and Corte­va there­fore still face the biggest hur­dle to mar­ket­ing their new, patent-pro­tect­ed genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied vari­eties.

Nev­er­the­less, the dereg­u­la­tion process adopt­ed today marks the fail­ure of an enlight­ened, demo­c­ra­t­ic debate on tech­nol­o­gy in Europe. It calls into ques­tion both the integri­ty of lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tions – which have cham­pi­oned the cause with pre­pos­ter­ous argu­ments – and the ethics of politi­cians from almost all polit­i­cal groups in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. Instead of hon­est­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing the state of their knowl­edge and lack there­of, as well as their doubts, they have cho­sen to issue blank cheques for poten­tial future inno­va­tions using seman­ti­cal­ly care­ful­ly craft­ed nar­ra­tives. Using tricks that can­not be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied, a dis­tinc­tion has been forced through between sup­pos­ed­ly ‘nat­ur­al’ and less nat­ur­al genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied prod­ucts, a dis­tinc­tion that makes no reli­able state­ment what­so­ev­er about their respec­tive risks.

The telling silence of politi­cians and estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic bod­ies regard­ing the real inten­tion of the inter­na­tion­al genet­ic engi­neer­ing cor­po­ra­tions – to bring future plant breed­ing under the patent con­trol of their legal depart­ments – looks just as bad on pub­licly fund­ed sci­ence, which of course also ben­e­fits from this, as on politi­cians who, in the name of sup­posed com­pet­i­tive­ness and inno­va­tion, are pri­vatis­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights over seeds, cur­tail­ing cit­i­zens’ free­dom of choice and jeop­ar­dis­ing the pro­tec­tion of health and the envi­ron­ment.

Alternative truths from science?

This fail­ure of demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­course on tech­nol­o­gy under­mines the cred­i­bil­i­ty of organ­ised sci­ence and the already lim­it­ed trust in the integri­ty of pol­i­tics. Inci­den­tal­ly, the major­i­ty that vot­ed in favour of this today in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the sup­port of the far right.

How­ev­er, at a time when a social­ly bind­ing con­cept of truth faces enor­mous threats, this deci­sion also con­sti­tutes an attack on our fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing sci­en­tif­ic hon­esty. When seman­tic con­tor­tions such as ‘new genom­ic tech­niques’ – rather than genet­ic engi­neer­ing – become the basis for revis­ing the risk assess­ment involved and cit­i­zens’ right to self-deter­mi­na­tion, and when fear-free sci­en­tif­ic dis­cus­sion is no longer pos­si­ble, Europe’s democ­ra­cy has lost an impor­tant foun­da­tion for future deci­sions. 

Commission goes viral: GM-microorganisms

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, such deci­sions are like­ly to be on the agen­da before the end of this year on a much more rad­i­cal pro­pos­al for dis­man­tling of the Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing Act – one that pos­es a far greater threat to free­dom of choice, the envi­ron­ment and pub­lic health. The EU Com­mis­sion has moved ahead, and the Coun­cil and Par­lia­ment are cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing its pro­pos­al to mas­sive­ly relax the rules on the release of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microor­gan­isms (rang­ing from bac­te­ria to fun­gi and virus­es) into the envi­ron­ment!

Pho­to ©Annemarie Volling (AbL) — Save Our Seeds Team, Franziska Achter­berg and Ali­na Banse in front of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment

Further information

Inf’OGM: La déré­gle­men­ta­tion des OGM/NTG adop­tée à Stras­bourg

IFOAM Organ­ics Europe: Europe re-affirms com­mit­ment to pro­duce with­out NGTs and warns of threats on Euro­pean seed sov­er­eign­ty 

Friends of the Earth Europe: EU law­mak­ers scrap basic rights for con­sumers, breed­er, food sec­tor

Arche Noah: NGT Vote: Euro­pean Par­lia­ment opens the flood­gates to a wave of patents 

Test­biotech: NGT plants: the EU fails to take the right deci­sions