Derailing EU rules on new GMOs
 CRISPR-Files expose lobbying tactics to deregulate new GMOs
29.03.2021
With the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Von der Leyen Commission has committed to a fundamental shift away from industrial agriculture as we know it today. With a 50 per cent pesticide reduction target, and a 25 per cent organic agriculture target by 2030, business as usual is no longer an option. This creates an existential crisis for those corporations that are dominant both in the pesticide and in the commercial seed market, notably Bayer, BASF, Corteva (DowDupont) and Syngenta (ChemChina).
These corporations are set to lose a large share of their profits from selling pesticides, and are therefore looking for a new business model: increase profits from the seed business. This applies all the more to German chemical giant Bayer, which is in deep financial trouble since buying Monsanto, because of ongoing and costly glyphosate litigation in the US. To have new GMO seeds without regulatory oversight, but still patented, would surely serve that aim.
Executive summary
The biotech industry is waging an ongoing battle to get its new generation of genetic modification techniques excluded from European GMO regulations. This would mean that plants, animals and micro-organisms, made using ‘genome editing’ techniques like CRISPR-Cas, would not be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling. Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered various new tactics used by the biotech industry to prepare the ground for such deregulation. Officials from national ministries were hand-picked for joint strategy meetings with lobbyists; a think-tank set up a new Taskforce with a large grant from the Gates Foundation to pave the way to GM deregulation via “climate narratives”; and a lobby platform built around a sign-on letter overstating its backing by research institutes. The European Commission is due to publish a study by the end of April about the new techniques which will provide a basis for further discussion among Member States. Civil society and farming groups call on the EU to prioritise environmental and health concerns, and keep GM safety checks in place.
About the CRISPR-files: Corporate Europe Observatory has shared large sets of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests to the European Commission and to the Belgian and Dutch governments, with a number of investigative journalists. All documents are now available online.
Media coverage: Spiegel (DE), EUObserver, Reporterre part 1 (FR), Reporterre part 2, La Libre Belgique, apache.be (BE), El Diario (ES), Il Domani (IT), Público (PT), Reporters United (EL).
Follow up coverage appeared in De Standaard (BE), Libération (FR), Le Courrier du Soir (FR), Counterpunch (US)
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