After a year of dearth and famine brought on by heatwaves and rivers drying up, Europe is facing shortages of all types of crops and goods. However, some have called for the implementation of gene-edited crops: a step above the conventional GMO that most people are familiar with.
SEE: Europe Faces Worst Drought In 500 Years As Energy Markets Are Headed For ‘Disaster’
In June The WinePress detailed a new push for Europe and the rest of the world to offset these food shortages by quickly implementing gene-edited crops – crops that can be reengineered and spliced to gives crops all sorts of new traits that a conventional GMO cannot provide, such as rain resistance and other things of that nature. But at the same time those advocating for this also took pot shots at the organic food industry, groaning that that industry and the regulations surrounding it are a source of the problems Europe and other parts of the world face today:
Mainstream media has now renewed these calls for Europe to accept these crops, so much so, Politico ran a headline on October 4th that read, “Like it or not, gene-edited crops are coming to the EU.”
The outlet of course blames this famine on climate change but follows up by writing, “A growing number of European lawmakers say salvation may be just within reach in the form of genetically engineered super crops.”
Proponents of gene-editing crops say because the process is only realigning the preexisting genes it should allow it to be classified as normal food on the shelves.
You can utilize genome editing to rearrange the DNA that’s already there. It is just a matter of accelerating what would naturally happen in conventional breeding.
Reza Rasoulpour, global regulatory lead for crop protection at Corteva, the U.S. agricultural chemical and seed company, said
Politico wrote, ‘For this reason, the industry believes gene-edited crops should be treated just like conventional ones. But in 2018, to the dismay of the companies and researchers hoping for their big break, the EU’s highest court ruled that gene-edited crops should continue being regulated by the existing GMO framework — with its strict risk assessment mechanisms and labeling requirements.’
The European Commission reportedly is now deliberating a new framework for gene-edited crops under the banner of what they call “new genomic techniques” (NGTs). A new proposal is forecast to arrive around halfway of 2023.
If the Commission decides to have a risk assessment or a GMO-like [labeling] system, in the end, it will not really make a difference. Our small- and medium-sized companies, especially, are really lagging because they cannot afford a GMO-like system.
Petra Jorasch, from the plant-breeding lobby group Euroseeds, said
We have to make sure the technology is safe. Somehow we have to get the balance right.
What we’re looking for is a proportionate risk assessment for the NGTs, so that means we wouldn’t do away with it altogether. I know that in other jurisdictions they’ve been a little more radical, but our feeling is that it should be more proportionate.
Claire Bury, the EU official in charge of the regulatory proposal, told POLITICO’s Future of Food and Farming Summit in Paris last week.
Critics, such as organic growers and environmentalists, however argue that necessary boundaries, restrictions, and labeling should be in order. Critics have also pointed out that two companies, Bayer and Corteva, control 40% of the global market in this space.
‘Corteva, which holds the most patents on gene-editing techniques, was spun out of DowDuPont in 2018. Germany’s Bayer, the second largest patent holder, took over Monsanto in 2016, in an ill-fated deal that ended in multibillion-dollar compensation payouts over claims that the U.S. company’s Roundup herbicide caused cancer,’ Politico explained.
SEE: Head Gene Editor At Drug Giant Bayer Wants To Create Smaller Crops With RNAi To Fight Climate Change
We hear a lot of promises, but the industry is not really looking into sustainability traits like drought tolerance or pest resistance — they’re looking into herbicide resistance.
Eric Gall from the organic farmers’ lobby IFOAM Organics Europe, referring to the risk that farmers would be locked into using the industry’s proprietary combinations of seeds and chemicals.
For the moment, there is really not much development at all on abiotic stress.
Still, in the discourse, it’s put a lot: ‘Yeah, we can produce these varieties, it will be quicker than with conventional breeding.’ But it’s just not true. It’s just an empty promise.
Astrid Österreicher from the GMO watchdog group Testbiotech, said, referring to environmental factors like drought, temperature shifts and CO2 levels.
But even though Politico published a dogmatic headline, the outlet provided this caveat: ‘In fact, despite laxer regulation in other parts of the world, no company has been able to come up with a drought-tolerant — let alone drought-resistant — crop using gene-editing technologies. Farmers in Argentina are growing genetically altered wheat that’s able to withstand drier conditions, but the plant is a GMO, with parts of its DNA spliced from sunflowers.’
Ty Vaughn, who leads plant biotechnology research at Bayer, addressed their quest to try and make these crops.
That’s one of the big challenges. The thing about drought tolerance is that it’s extremely complex. You need to understand the plant’s physiology in a lot of detail, there are a lot of genes that might be involved to achieve drought tolerance. And it’s important to analyze and test how this works in different environments.
But this is one of the reasons why there are skeptics in the first place:
Gene-editing techniques are certainly not as precise as they are portrayed to be; they do result in unintended side-effects.
That’s why we need to have a risk assessment and a traceability system. And this is what the current GMO framework provides, so I’d question why we should throw away 20 years of biosafety standards.
Gall added
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
As arrogant as Politico’s headline is, I am inclined to believe this will be the future. However, most people are going to be indifferent to that right now, as more and more continue to try and deviate away from GMO and highly-processed foods, in a continent that was already leaps and bounds stricter than say the circus tent of the United States. However, once the Western economies are finally allowed to crash and burn, and the famine and energy problems get insanely out of control, the people will beg and accept whatever the government wants to implement, i.e. social credit scores, food IDs, carbon calculators, and so forth.
I suspect it will be a colossal failure down the road, as people conversely get sick from all these gene edits.
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
Isaiah 5:13
This agenda also falls in line with the initiatives to push vertical farming and hydroponics on the masses.
Vertical Farming Companies Create Manifesto To Establish Sustainable Food System
US Appellate Court Rules That Hydroponic Crops Qualify For USDA Organic Certification
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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