There may yet be hope for the EU!!! As I’ve said before some of the greatest barriers to new food technologies in the EU are the onerous Novel Foods and GMO legislations. With the UK signing into law rules for its Precision Breeding Act (2023) gene edited crops can be grown in England. There’s a backlog of potential crops for commercialisation, including vitamin D enriched tomatoes and high lipid barley. Hopefully some crops will soon be commercially available.
This may push the EU to review its antiquated GMO regulations and pursue the proposed February 2024 changes that would see two classifications. One for crops obtained using new genomic techniques (NGTs) like CRISPR, and another for GMOs where foreign DNA is inserted into the plant genome. On the other hand, here we are over 18 months later with little progress to show. Living linearly in an exponentially changing world is something the EU or any other nation can ill afford.
All the while the EU endorses random mutagenesis using various radiation sources and mutagenic chemicals!!!!Give me a CRISPR edited plant vs one randomly mutated using gamma irradiation any day. Particularly if the mutagenic variety is from decades ago and never had its DNA sequenced to find out what had been modified.
GMO crops have been around for some 30 years with no credible scientific evidence of harm to humans. As for animals they represent the biggest feeding trial ever, with some 95% of all animals grown for food or dairy in the US fed GMO containing feedstock.
Animals, including humans do not absorb DNA from their food. As the FDA says, cows do not become grass and chickens do not become corn!
We’re going to need every weapon in our food armoury to feed our 9.7 bn humans (and their 1.3 bn or more per cats and dogs!) sustainably, healthily and fairly. Precision breeding and other genetic modifications are among the most potent of these weapons; hopefully the EU will upgrade its arsenal soon.
