Open letter: European Commission’s biased road to deregulation of new GMOs
Today, in collaboration with 39 organizations, we sent an open letter to EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides highlighting our serious concerns about how DG SANTE is organising the impact assessment on new genomic techniques (NGTs) and the consultations that will feed into the assessment.
In particular, the letter highlights the fatal flaw in the public consultation conducted by the EU Commission in early summer 2022, characterised by a general lack of transparency and absence of policy options materials.
We call on the EU Commission to repeat those parts of the impact assessment on NGTs that fall short of the required standards. More broadly, we ask the EU Commission to follow the ECJ decision that NGTs products must be considered GMOs and regulated as such. Possible NGTs deregulation would put at risk the environment, food safety, consumers’ and farmers’ right to choose, as well as the organic, conventional, and non-GMO sectors.