The European Commission defended its new proposed legislation on plants produced with new GM techniques at a hearing before the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on 9 April, in the face of critical remarks of the French food agency ANSES. In two opinions published in November 2023 and March 2024, ANSES openly challenged the main elements of the Commission’s 2023 draft legislation on plants edited with new GM techniques, also known as new genomic techniques (NGTs). On the "equivalence" criteria of the NGTs with conventionally bred plants, Matthieu Schuler, ANSES's director general, reiterated the need for “precise definitions”, including the definition of a conventional plant and techniques compatible with category 1 (which the Commission wants to exempt from risk assessment, traceability and labelling). The ANSES boss also called for a permanent monitoring network to determine potential undesirable effects on plants or wildlife derived from gene-edited plants. “We expect increased use and therefore increased exposure to NGT products,” which is why the experts are recommending effective post-marketing surveillance, Schuler added. Euractiv

 

 

Research in the US shows that mandatory labelling of GM foods may actually improve consumer attitudes towards them, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances. When consumers actually encountered disclosure labels on GMO foods, their attitudes towards those foods improved, according to the study co-authors, economists Jane Kolodinsky and Jayson Lusk. In fact, Kolodinsky and Lusk found that mandatory labelling led to a 19% reduction in opposition to GMO foods. [GMW comment: While this is US research and the attitudes of consumers there may be different from those in the EU and UK, it may be unwelcome news to UK and EU politicians who are determined to avoid labelling new GM foods.] AOL.com

 

 

During the parliamentary work on the proposal for a European regulation on plant reproductive material, known as the “seeds regulation", a question arose: should so-called “non-targeted mutagenesis” (random mutagenesis) be considered as an “essentially biological process"? As these processes are excluded from patentability, the question may seem important. But such a decision would not be without consequences for the regulation of GMOs. Inf'OGM

 

 

At the beginning of October last year, outgoing Dutch Farm Minister Piet Adema argued in the cabinet for a ban on the weedkiller glyphosate. He did this because of concerns about a possible link with Parkinson's disease. However, his proposal met resistance within the coalition. This is evident from documents that Zembla obtained through an appeal to the Open Government Act. Adema came up against Minister Mark Harbers (Infrastructure and Water Management) in the cabinet. Harbers feared "precedent effect" if the advice of the pesticide authority Ctgb, which stated that glyphosate is safe, was not followed. His officials wrote that if the Ctgb advice were ignored, "all decisions about whether or not to allow substances" could be called into question. Ultimately, the Council of Ministers decided that the Netherlands would abstain from the European vote on glyphosate. That was also the position that Adema publicly defended, something that brought him sharp criticism from the House of Representatives, where a majority was in favour of a ban on glyphosate. Zembla

 

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