2023-10-19 10:07:26
Full support for Brussels: The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina are once again playing their political advisory card and are urging the German state governments and the federal government with the Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir to adopt the simplified approach planned by the EU Commission Approval for genome-edited crops. The ad hoc statement from the joint five-member working group comes one day before the start of deliberations in the Federal Council.
Joachim Müller-Jung
Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” department.
The fact that the research institutions in the country, as well as the plant breeding companies, welcome the EU Commission’s draft for the new regulation of certain genetically modified plants has been clear since the day in June of this year on which the Brussels proposal became public. The political reaction to this, however, was cautious, if not negative. The majority of the Greens in particular still see no reason to change the strict European guidelines that have been in force for more than two decades.
Essentially, it’s about crops that can be bred more quickly and more specifically using the new editing processes known as gene scissors (e.g. Crispr-Cas9) – so-called NGT-1 plants. The molecular intervention in the plant genome creates controlled mutations that can often no longer be distinguished from naturally occurring mutations or from classic breeding methods that have been used for decades.
This distinguishes these genome-edited plants from the transgenic plants for which the strict European genetic engineering regulations were once created. In NGT-1 plants, for example, no foreign genes are introduced; overall, the interventions are much more moderate – and easier, i.e. cheaper. And it is precisely because of this equality with natural mutations that the new plants show – as the DFG Leopoldina paper states – a “comparably low risk profile to conventionally bred plants”. Therefore, according to the scientists, they should finally be treated on an equal footing with the cultivars that have long been marketed and removed from the scope of the strict genetic engineering law.
Image: FAZ
The DFG and Leopoldina see an “essential need for information” on the part of politicians in three crucial points – this means that science does not feel sufficiently understood here. This concerns:
1. the European-based precautionary principle. Opponents of the opening proposal often justify their rejection of the Brussels proposal by pointing to the irreversibility of genetic modification. In other words: once plants with new mutations have been released into the environment, they could – hypothetically – prove harmful at some point. However, the DFG Leopoldina working group is convinced that this also applies to all genetic changes that have traditionally been caused by radioactive radiation or chemical mutagenesis. And: nature itself is constantly producing new mutations for evolutionary reasons. No study has so far shown an increased risk of genome-edited plants for humans or the environment. There is therefore no particular, “scientifically based cause for concern” with the new NGT-1 plants. Merely speculative dangers cannot undermine the precautionary principle. Due to the targeted gene interventions, the new generation of genetically modified plants even have a lower risk profile than those from traditional breeding. The “depth of intervention” is “orders of magnitude” lower.
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