The environmental release of genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs)
Why the EU must maintain robust safeguards
The European Commission wants to make it easier to put genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs) into the environment, including bacteria, fungi, algae and viruses. To achieve this, it has proposed to dismantle some of the EU’s regulatory safeguards designed to protect people, their families and the environment we all share.
Save Our Seeds believes the EU must maintain its robust safeguards for releasing GM microorganisms into the environment.
Here is why.
Microbes are the foundation of all life
Invisible to the naked eye, microbes are integral to all life. Plants, animals and humans are all tightly linked to their microbiomes – the microbial communities with which they have co-evolved, and which are critical to their health.
At the same time, most microbial life remains unknown to science. Most microorganisms cannot be grown in laboratories, which is one reason why more than 90 percent have never been described. How GM microbes and their engineered genetic material will behave in this “microbial dark matter” is difficult to predict reliably.
Humans have long worked with microbes – carefully
People have long used microbes for their benefit: to produce food such as cheese, beer and wine, to improve soils and protect crops, and to support human health. In the 20th century, companies also began using microorganisms in controlled industrial settings to produce valuable compounds, such as enzymes, vitamins and pharmaceuticals.
GM microbes are not new – but this is different
Microorganisms used in such settings have also been genetically engineered. These GM microbes are kept under containment and do not mingle with naturally occurring ones. Companies take stringent measures to prevent them from spreading to people, fields or natural areas. When GM microbes are deliberately released into open environments, that control is given up.
Environmental releases remain rare – for good reason
The EU has never approved any large-scale releases of live GM microbes into the environment. It has only authorised GM microbes for medical uses, such as GM viruses used as vaccines, under a strict medical safety framework.
Even outside the EU, very few products have been approved for commercial use, and even fewer are actually on the market. Designing GMM products that perform reliably in complex natural environments while also being commercially viable presents substantial technological and market challenges of its own.
Designed to spread and outcompete
Some GM microbes approved in other countries are designed to outcompete other microbes naturally present in the targeted microbiome. Others are intended to engineer microbes around them to reproduce their toxic effects. These products were approved in the United States and Brazil, respectively, with minimal regulatory oversight and without any post-release monitoring.
Once released, they are difficult to control
Microorganisms reproduce, spread and interact with other organisms. They frequently exchange genetic material across species boundaries. Once a GM microorganism becomes established in an open ecosystem – including the human body – it may persist and spread beyond the place and population for which it was originally intended.
No one can opt out
Engineered microbes can colonise a person’s gut, a farmer’s soil, a waterway or a protected natural area without the explicit consent of the people or communities affected. That makes effective regulation and precaution especially important before release.
Engineered mouth bacteria intended to persist for decades are already being marketed in the United States. These GM bacteria can spread from person to person without adequate warning or information.
AI is opening a new frontier
Microbes are also becoming a major testing ground for AI-designed genomes. AI can speed up the design process and make it possible to explore a much wider range of possibilities. It also opens the door to creating entirely new microbes and microbial communities that do not exist in nature.
This includes so-called mirror bacteria, which our immune systems and natural predators may not be able to recognise. Leading researchers have called for a halt to this line of research until its risks are better understood.
Europe’s existing safety systems are under threat
People and nature in Europe are protected by some of the world’s most robust environmental laws, including rules governing genetically modified organisms. Before a GM organism can be placed on the market, its potential risks to human health and the environment must be assessed. It must also be identifiable and monitored after release, while market authorisations are regularly reviewed in light of new information.
To bring GM microbes to market more quickly, the EU Commission now wants to remove some of these safeguards. It wants to make market authorisations unlimited in time, fast-track risk assessments and even allow post-release monitoring to be waived in some cases.
Save Our Seeds believes this is the wrong direction. The more difficult a technology is to control once released, the stronger – not weaker – the safeguards should be.
We still have a choice
We are still dealing with the consequences of technologies once presented as progress: asbestos, synthetic pesticides, ozone-depleting substances, microplastics and “forever chemicals.”
Genetically modified microbes are not yet being introduced into nature on a large scale. We can still decide how – and whether – such releases should take place.
We can harness the power of nature without unleashing new and unproven technologies that we may not be able to control.
Nature is no laboratory.
Real progress means pairing innovation with responsibility, not conducting
uncontrolled experiments in nature.