Articles

Dear Commissioner Andriukaitis,

In the interest of protecting the environment and public health, genetically modified crops are subject to risk assessment, an authorisation process and labelling rules under EU law. All nontraditional breeding processes that change the structure of DNA using genetic engineering technologies or interfere with gene regulation fall within the scope of these GM regulations. Some are now calling on the European Commission to exempt new genetic engineering techniques from GM rules. The undersigned groups argue that such an exception could threaten the environment and our health, and would violate EU law.

Any attempt to engineer genomes by invasive methods can cause unexpected and unpredictable effects. For example, “cisgenesis” - a genetic engineering technique that uses genes from the same

species - is still genetic engineering and is therefore subject to unexpected and unpredictable effects caused by the genetic engineering process itself, and not by the trait or sequence inserted. New techniques to genetically engineer plants and animals, such as so-called DNA scissors (nucleases) and interventions in gene regulation, raise additional concerns.

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27 January 2015

Francesco Panella, President, Bee-life European Beekeeping Coordination

Nina Holland, Researcher, Corporate Europe Observatory

Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, Co-Director, Econexus, UK

Andrea Ferrante, Coordinating Committee, European Coordination Via Campesina

Mute Schimpf, Food Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Europe

Dr Helen Wallace, Director, GeneWatch, UK,

Saskia Richartz, Acting Director, Greenpeace European Unit

Christoph Then, Executive Director, Testbiotech, Germany