Urgent call for labelling and traceability of new GM products

Civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions from across Europe, includ­ing Save Our Seeds, have issued a joint state­ment urg­ing EU deci­sion mak­ers to uphold manda­to­ry labelling and trace­abil­i­ty for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied plants devel­oped through new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs), such as CRISPR/Cas.

The appeal comes in response to mount­ing pres­sure from indus­try groups seek­ing to exempt these new GM plants from any trace­abil­i­ty and labelling require­ments. In their joint state­ment, 49 Euro­pean and nation­al organ­i­sa­tions warn that remov­ing these require­ments would under­mine the fun­da­men­tal rights of 450 mil­lion EU cit­i­zens and jeop­ar­dise the integri­ty of GMO-free farm­ing sys­tems across Europe.

The debate over GMO labelling and trace­abil­i­ty has reached a crit­i­cal point, as final nego­ti­a­tions are under­way con­cern­ing the pro­posed dereg­u­la­tion of GM plants engi­neered with new GM tech­niques (NGTs). The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters have pro­posed that only GM seeds be labelled — exclud­ing final food and feed prod­ucts derived from these GM plants. Only the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment has tak­en a clear stand in favour of manda­to­ry on-pack­age labelling for all prod­ucts con­tain­ing NGTs.

The sig­na­to­ries of the joint state­ment call on the Par­lia­ment to hold firm in defence of con­sumer rights and GMO-free agri­cul­ture. Rolling back labelling and trace­abil­i­ty would not only vio­late long-stand­ing EU prin­ci­ples of food trans­paren­cy, but also erode pub­lic trust in the food sys­tem.

Read the joint state­ment here

Read the press release from food­watch

Read the op-ed by Franziska Achter­berg, Save Our Seeds, on Arc2020

Pho­to ©Greens/EFA — GMO protest in Stras­bourg, Feb­ru­ary 2024

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