Save our Seeds

Together with 39 organisations we have sent a letter to EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides to express our serious concerns over the way in which the Directorate-General for Health (DG Sante) is organising the impact assessment on new GMOs – new genomic techniques (NGTs) – and in particular, the consultations that will feed into the assessment. The outcome of this assessment could have far reaching impacts on consumer choice, food safety, organic and conventional farming and the environment.

In 2018 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that new gene-edited organisms are covered by the EU’s GMO laws and are subject to the same safety assessments and labelling requirements as any other GMOs. The ruling galvanised a concerted lobbying response by promoters of new GM technology to get these new GMOs exempted from the EU’s GMO laws.

The EU’s green ambitions are in great jeopardy. The agribusiness industry is using the cost-of-living crisis as an excuse to push stronger EU environmental legislation off the table and weaken already existing legislation. For instance, they are pushing against tighter pesticides rules and in favour of relaxing GMO rules. But the lobby is increasingly driven by GM researchers and institutes with links to industry or with vested interests. The Commission seems to be listening to these pro-deregula

UK government and EU lobbyists are misleading policymakers, regulators, and the public. Report by Claire Robinson

A group of 56 international scientists and policy experts have published a statement opposing the use of the term “precision breeding” to describe gene or genome editing, on the grounds that it is “technically and scientifically inaccurate and therefore misleads Parliament, regulators, and the public”.

The main differences between targeted mutagenesis (=new GMOs) and conventional breeding

Targeted mutagenesis is the term for new GMOs that are produced with new genetic engineering methods, such as CRISPR/Cas, TALENs and others. As a rule of thumb no genetic material from other species is permanently integrated.

Targeted mutagenesis is the term for new GMOs that are produced with new genetic engineering methods, such as CRISPR/Cas, TALENs and others. As a rule of thumb no genetic material from other species is permanently integrated.

How the EU Commission and EFSA are paving the way for deregulation of New GE

30 June 2022 / Testbiotech recently participated in an European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) consultation on guidelines for the risk assessment of ‘cisgenic’ plants, which ended at the beginning of this week. The ‘cisgenic’ plants are genetically engineered, but, in contrast to transgenic plants, contain no genetic material from other species. EFSA suggests that most applications of CRISPR/Cas can be put into this category. The consultation is, therefore, generally relevant to the risk assessment of plants derived from New GE (also called new genomic techniques, NGT). However, the way in which EFSA deals with this issue appears to be completely inadequate.

By Stop Gene Drives Campaign, Save Our Seeds, Germany; Terre a Vie, Burkina Faso; Third World Network; African Biodiversity Network (ABN); Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA Kenya).

Gene drive technology uses new genetic engineering techniques including CRISPR/Cas9 to forcibly spread genetically engineered traits, including lethal ones, throughout entire populations and species, overriding natural rules of inheritance so that nearly 100% of offspring inherit the genetically engineered trait.

While this disease affects one third of the world’s population, some scientists suggest that a new technology called gene drive could be a game-changer.

Gene Drives – manipulating the DNA of mosquitoes to pass down an extinction gene

The research consortium Target Malaria, mostly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Philanthropy Fund, is developing genetically engineered mosquitoes in the lab that would either make all offspring male or all female offspring infertile. They use the Crispr-Cas methodology to implant a system into their DNA that would replicate when mosquitoes mate, ensuring that this gene spreads throughout the wild mosquito population. But while some hope that this would be the magic bullet to suppress mosquitoe populations and stop the malaria transmission cycle, this currently unproven high risk technology poses fundamental questions for humanity: How far are we willing to go, how high can the risks and uncertainties be in order to test a hypothesis?

The Risks of Gene Drive mosquitoes

Tell your national ministers and your Members of the European Parliament to keep new GMOs strictly regulated!

Sign the petition now!

Save Our Seeds Programme is a series of training meetings for young activists, educators, artists, local and national leaders of formal organizations and informal movements, experienced campaigners, agroecological farmers, breeders, scientists, philosophers and seed savers.

The programme will be divided into two parts – the public-open part, streamed online for a wider public and a closed part – an online workshop programme for our collective of activists.

The young activists interested in joining the collective will undergo an application process. All EU nationals between 16 and 30 years can apply by filling out THIS FORM till 10.04.2022.