Biotech bullies lobbying EU to abandon regulations

[Cherry Lavell]

Dar All

Sustainable Pulse reveals in a sidebar  this post from Pat Thomas of Beyond GM --  (my selection follows) – from https://sustainablepulse.com/2019/07/25/we-dont-need-no-regulation-biotech-bullies-want-to-re-engineer-the-law/#.XTnkfuhKjIU

 

“As this article was written the new UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, used his first speech to support the idea of reducing regulation on GMOs: “Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti genetic modification rules and let’s develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.”

That’s because a year ago today the European Court of Justice ruled that organisms that arise from a new technique called directed mutagenesis are GMOs as defined by the EU GMO Directive. As such they should be regulated in the same way as GMOs produced using older techniques. Since many new GMO techniques use this step the law has been widely interpreted as applying to all new GMOs.

You might think that a ruling made by the highest court in Europe in matters of Union law, would be the end of the story. In fact it was only the beginning.

The ECJ ruling was made after considerable deliberation and consultation with experts in the field, and was fully in line with strict EU regulations on genetically engineered organisms as well as the current status of the science for this technology.

Nevertheless, following the announcement, barely a heartbeat had passed before biotech scientists were wringing their hands, sounding the death knell for science and innovation and demanding that something be done.

They described the ruling as a departure from “science based decision making” and “backward looking and hostile to progress” – ridiculous pronouncements that were heavy on the hysteria and light on fact.”...(continues...)

Best wishes

Cherry