Green genetic engineering: What are 20 interventions in the DNA?

“Destroying pests and securing nutrition: The EU wants to relax its rules on genetic engineering for new grain and vegetable varieties. Six contradictions show how risky this is

The move comes at the last minute, although it has been announced, prepared and repeatedly postponed for years. The EU wants to significantly relax the strict approval tests for plant varieties whose genetic material has been modified using so-called New Genetic Engineering Methods (NGT). It would be best now, because the European elections are next spring. Will the cis genetics, the Crispr/Cas gene scissors, have made their way through Parliament and the Council of Ministers by then and will they soon end up on Europe's fields?

Probably not. The Commission's proposal, even though it has been planned for a long time, remains too immature and full of conflict for that. The new genetic engineering methods should achieve great things. For example, corn, wheat, potatoes or vegetables that have been developed with it should kill the growing number of insects, viruses and fungi that threaten harvests. For example, NGT could promote the goal of the European Green Deal to apply only half as many chemical pesticides, weed killers or fungicides on fields by 2030.

The EU is also focusing on plant varieties that withstand drought, storms and floods or are able to obtain fertilizer from the air instead of fossil raw materials. In short: These new plants are intended to secure global nutrition in times of climate change.

Much uncertainty and lack of persuasion

In fact, the advances in the laboratories of those biotechnologists who edit DNA sections almost editorially like letters, i.e. can reformulate, insert or delete them, are overtaking themselves. The new, powerful instruments fascinate scientists and plant breeders. They promise answers to the major crises for politicians who are overwhelmed. Isn't that sufficient legitimation for a new start with a technology that has so far been unloved in Europe?

No, say nature and consumer advocates, church members and environmental scientists, the organic industry, and most of the large food retailers. You have many questions: do such plants really fight the major crises so much faster than other solutions? Can the risks for humans, animals, other plants and ecosystems be clearly assessed now? Or: How can organic farmers, small and medium-sized breeders hold their own against an agricultural industry whose research departments, worth billions, are vastly superior to them in biotechnology?

But instead of doing serious persuasion work in the minefield of different world views, scientific controversies and economic conflicts of interest, the commission pushes many problems away factually, postponing in time or politically.

It is true that many of the previous genetic engineering regulations will remain in place with the reform. Strict risk assessments would still apply when genes are transferred from another species, such as from a birch to an apple tree or from a sunflower to a soybean plant. However, if DNA has been altered within a species; if the result could have come about just as well in nature or through conventional breeding and the process can no longer be detected in the product, then there should be exceptions in the future. As long as 20 interventions in the genome are not exceeded, the new varieties are equal to those from conventional breeding. According to the draft, NGTs with a larger number of changes still benefit from simplifications in approval. There are even incentives to develop them, depending on how high their contribution to the sustainability of agriculture is or how deep the impact is in individual cases.

The reason: there are already exceptions to genetic engineering law for conventional technologies that trigger random genetic changes, for example with the help of chemicals and radioactive radiation. But as finely polished as it all sounds, the Commission suppresses and produces a large number of explosive contradictions.

Unintended consequences are played down, borders seem arbitrary

First: The proposal claims strong consumer and environmental protections, while downplaying possible unintended consequences of NGT crops. The commission declares most of them to be less risky than conventional varieties. In doing so, she relies on statements by the European food authority Efsa and an EU study that served as the basis for the deregulation. But the latter is controversial. A group of experts evaluated it on behalf of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and attested to it "arbitrary conclusions" on more than 200 pages that "are not based on a systematic analysis".

At the same time, the question how the EU can already dispel any doubts about the new technologies when their products are usually only tested in individual cases in field trials and are not grown anywhere except in two or three countries? There are always studies that show unexpected effects, or they question the claim of "naturalness".

After all, the Commission is planning a multi-year monitoring that should also record possible unexpected effects on the NGT. So take a look first and make new arrangements if something goes wrong: this strategy is tantamount to adapting it to US legal philosophy. In the US there is no precautionary principle as in the EU constitution. Instead, strict liability rules apply. The new NGT rules could undermine both protection approaches at the same time.

The second contradiction: While the EU Commission emphasizes the scientific nature, it also defines borderlines that appear to be rather accidental or politically defined. In any case, many experts see 20 DNA interventions as a criterion for the exception as a completely arbitrary limit. Even one cut can have fundamental effects on the plant genome.

Lack of labeling, organic farming under threat and corporations winning

Strongly criticized and also contradictory, the EU Commission wants to deal with the principle of freedom of choice: If you don't want to buy products that have been modified with the help of genetic engineering, you don't have to do so. At the same time, however, the EU Commission has reduced the necessary transparency in its new rules to a minimum.

NGT varieties have to be registered and the seeds have to be labeled - but not the food and feed made from them. Unlike the old genetic engineering, the new one would not be on the packaging. Only the farmer knows what he is sowing. Consumers, however, who are already overwhelmed with the task of scrutinizing human rights claims, nutritional values and possible packaging greenwashing for every product, will certainly not also scour the seed register.

The lack of transparency could even harm organic farmers. You can't reliably trace the new methods either in processed products or in the pollen flown onto the field, which is why it would hardly be possible or only possible with immense effort to guarantee the claim to be free of genetic engineering. In order to protect the organic sector, the Commission should at least have provided workable detection methods, but it has made no effort to do so. The Commission wants to increase the organic share in agriculture to 25 percent in just seven years. Promote and oppress at the same time? This is the fourth contradiction.

Large corporations are the winners of the EU plans

If the organic sector were actually gradually suffocated, then its innovative approaches would also be endangered. Complex crop rotations, humus-enriching tillage, ecological pest control, a view of the entire ecosystem: not least the large seed companies have benefited from such practical knowledge in recent years.

They are the real winners of the directive. Because the new genetic engineering processes can also be patented, and patents can be applied for, used and enforced: This is something that the global seed giants with their large legal departments in particular can afford. This is where the fifth, perhaps the most explosive, contradiction appears: on the one hand, the EU assures that it wants to stand up for small and medium-sized seed companies - on the other hand, it does nothing to protect them from inflationary copyright claims with a new variety protection law.

In fact, the NGT are so simple and inexpensive that even medium-sized companies can benefit from them. The Federal Association of German Plant Breeders (bdp) is therefore in favor of the new EU rules - but against patents on seeds. Because more of such protected traits could result in breeders being denied access to genetic material, which is actually a public good. "This development threatens to slow down breeding progress, narrow genetic diversity and increase dependency on licensors," says the bdp.

This also threatens new power, new concentration, monotony. Seeds are the basis for diversity, and diversity creates not only ecological stability but also a vibrant Europe of regions. A sixth contradiction emerges here: on the one hand, the Commission wants to promote this Europe, but at the same time, with its new rules on genetic engineering, it is massively curtailing the influence of the member states. Because it gives itself far-reaching powers to update genetic engineering legislation. Cultivation bans that national governments have been able to enact so far would no longer be permitted.

In the end, pressure from the EU could not advance anything

Will the member states put up with that? The next few months will show whether the Commission's concept will find a majority in the Council of Ministers. The signs point more towards controversy. The German Minister of Agriculture, Cem Özdemir, has already announced that he also wants to support NGT coexistence with organic farmers and non-GMO conventional farmers, as well as "patent freedom" and the precautionary principle.

  And the European Parliament? EU Vice President Frans Timmermans is pushing for a positive vote by trying to link genetic engineering regulation with that for the "sustainable use of pesticides". The goal of only using half as many agricultural poisons is already being negotiated and is being fought by the conservative faction. That's why Timmermans put together a package solution: If the conservatives should swallow the pesticide toad and allow the Greens and Social Democrats to open up genetic engineering - then both projects in the EU will get through as quickly as possible. But such a package is not only questionable in substance, in the end there may be something completely different in it: nothing. Because in the end both projects, pesticide and genetic engineering rules, could fail.”

 

If NGT results replace chemicals that harm fungi and insects, then why do'nt NGT results harm us, humans? Even now, we do not understand why relatively young people started to get colon cancer very often. Does the EU want to prepare more such surprises for us?