Behind the smokescreen
Vested interests of EU scientists lobbying for GMO deregulation
In 2018 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that new gene-edited organisms are covered by the EU’s GMO laws and are subject to the same safety assessments and labelling requirements as any other GMOs. The ruling galvanised a concerted lobbying response by promoters of new GM technology to get these new GMOs exempted from the EU’s GMO laws.
Besides the seed industry, scientist organisations like the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO), the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) and the EU network for Sustainable Agriculture through Genome Editing (EU-SAGE) also lobbied for legislative change.
What are these groups? Why would they promote a weakening of the EU’s GMO legislation?
This report answers this question by investigating the members of three EU level organisations and the national organisations with which they are affiliated. It shows that most represent a limited field of applied science, and that many have material interests in the commercial use of GM technology in agriculture.
