A legislative proposal on new GMOs, with broad repercussions for the day-to-day work of organic and GMO-free processors, retailers and operators is being negotiated in Brussels. Is your company active in organic food, for example as a retailer, processor, or food brand? Does your company want to remain GMO-free? Is freedom of choice and high transparency towards consumers and EU citizens important to you? Read on and learn how you can raise your voice.
What is happening?
In April 2024, the European Parliament voted in agreement on its position on a legislation on “New Genomic Techniques”. If the Ministers of EU member states find a common position on this proposed legislation in the European Council, this means that negotiations on this proposed legislation would officially start in so-called ‘trilogue negotiations’ and we could soon be facing a new regulation on new GMOs.
There are some controversial points in the Council still that need to be ironed out before they can come to an agreement. Some Member States insist that there is a solution for the issues on patents and some raised other points including questions related to adequate protection for the organic sector. Read more about this in the news item New genomic techniques, what comes up?
For freedom of choice for producers to use and importantly, not to use new GMOs in their production process, and freedom of choice for consumers to buy GMO-free products, traceability and labelling of all GMOs, including those derived from NGTs is crucial. And it is important to obtain the support for measures that enable companies to reliably implement labelling and traceability, i.e., for detection methods, EU-wide binding coexistence rules and the possibility of national and regional cultivation bans.
Whether the future EU legislation will contain these safeguards depends largely on the Council of Agriculture Ministers.
What can your company do?
To send a strong and transnational sign to the Member States who are about to come to a position, it is important that you make your voice heard. As a company – big, SMEs, start-up and in between – your voice matters. Your sector will be impacted by co-existence measures, traceability, labelling, and detection methods of these new genomic techniques. EU food companies can put economic pressure on the negotiations by supporting this joint letter by organic and conventional food company representatives.
Sign on by 31 August 2024! After that, the letter will be sent to the responsible Ministers in the EU countries. Translations of the letter are available in EN, DE, FR, IT, OL, CZ, HU, and Bulgarian. The letter has 190 signatures so far, but more voices are louder.
Signing-on takes less than 5 minutes! So, we encourage companies from all European countries to do so. Can or will you not sign? Please consider distributing the letter in your networks and urge companies to sign it (or send reminder if you already disseminated it).
- For more information on this letter, check out this press release from VLOG, and visit www.organicseurope.bio
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