New GMOs, no to open field experimentation. Civil society in Italy is activated
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Two representatives of the Italian Parliament together with the CREA research body and the Assobiotech confindustria association have declared their intention to start open-field testing of the new GMOs. A remake of the blitz attempted in May 2022, in the previous legislature. (1)
The initiative is proposed anticipating the European provisions on the matter, but already violating the sentence of the European Court of Justice (the guardian of the Treaties), which equates the new GMOs to the old GMOs. Even in Europe, after all, things are bad.
Friends of Earth Europe (FOEE), the largest network of European environmental organisations, denounces the influence of LOBBY di Big Ag on the European Commission and the dangers at hand, as we have seen. (2)
The letter from the GMO Free Italy Coalition
The news is clearly commented on by the GMO Free Italy Coalition, made up of 32 peasant, environmental, consumer and organic associations, including Égalité, which 'welcomes with concern the announcement of the approval by autumn 2023 of two bills which will allow field testing of new GMOs (NGTs), without waiting for any European provisions on the matter'. (3)
The open letter follows of the GMO Free Italy Coalition, released on March 15, 2023.
New GMOs, the roadmap Italian company
La roadmap was drawn on March 14, 2023 during the presentation of the Position Paper 'New genomic techniques genome editing and cisgenesis' created by CREA in collaboration with Assobiotec, the branch of Federchimica that brings together around a hundred industries active in the field of biotechnology.
The event, titled 'For productive, sustainable and competitive agriculture: the contribution of advanced plant genetics', saw the revival of all typical topics of the rhetorical arsenal used in the last 30 years by promoters before GMOs, now of the new GMOs obtained with the so-called New Genomic Techniques (NGT), renamed TEA in Italy, and presented by promoters as a panacea for all the environmental problems afflicting agriculture.
The GMO Free Italy Coalition considers it serious that the public institution, which should provide indications to farmers on the basis of a serious and in-depth documentary basis, is the spokesperson for industrial interests, in an evident conflict of interest.
The new 'miraculous' GMOs
Our products of the NGT/TEA are defined by the promoters of the bills, deposited by the president of the 9th Permanent Commission (Industry, commerce, tourism, agriculture and agri-food production) Senator Luca De Carlo (of Fratelli d'Italia, ed) and by the Secretary of the XIII Commission (Agriculture) to the Chamber Raffaele Nevi (of Forza Italia, ed), as not comparable to GMOs and comparable to varieties derived from natural mutations or traditional selection.
Not only. It is attributed to him the power to solve all environmental problems largely connected and caused by industrial agriculture, the indiscriminate use of pesticides, climate change and drought.
An unscientific rhetoric
For associations of the GMO Free Italy Coalition this rhetoric is based on scientific inaccuracies and on an anti-ecological and anti-social political vision, crushed on the interests of the seed and agro-industrial companies controlled by multinationals, as well as those of a small part of the world of public research, which hopes into new financing, forging dangerous links with the private sector.
These new biotechnologies, in fact, they will have as their first and only benefit theincreased power and control of powerful agribusiness lobbies on the agri-food supply chains in our country.
Furthermore, the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU reiterated how NGT cannot be considered outside the perimeter of Directive 2001/18/EC, which defines GMOs and regulates them, obliging them to risk assessment, traceability and labelling.
Italy does not want GMOs
Biological researchmeanwhile, it is lacking and sees the funding already approved for some years now blocked in bureaucratic hobbles.
According to this regulation, among other things, Italy has exercised the right to prohibit the cultivation of GMOs on its territory, with the favor of the vast majority of consumers and maintaining the distinctiveness of its agricultural production in the world.
The majority of Parliamentnow, instead, intends to tear up the current regulation, creating the conditions to bring the new GMOs to Italian tables, with the danger that consumers will be impossible to choose to avoid them if they are not correctly labelled.
A megaphone at the service of LOBBY of pesticides and seeds
Most topics that the parliamentarians and the CREA representatives bring in support of the need to deregulate the new GMOs can be found in the guidelines for the communication disseminated by theInternational Seed Federation (International Seed Federation).
The campaign promotional 'Building on Success', conducted over the last five years by the seed industry, attempts to equate laboratory manipulation and spontaneous mutations that occur in nature.
No hints instead it is made to the importance of tracking down the hundreds of off-target mutations that these biotechnologies cause.
The risk of off-target mutations
Several scientific works show that theediting of the genome – in a different way than the mutations that occur in nature – can in fact generate multiple DNA changes in addition to the desired mutation.
Mutations off target, Deletions and insertions as well as unwanted DNA rearrangements, chromothripsis (fragmentation of a chromosome or a region thereof) and insertions of exogenous DNA are not the exception, but the rule of NGT.
The problem, denounced by many, is that off-target effects are not studied to date nor sought with scientific rigor in the name of the much proclaimed precision of the method and the haste to patent the products or the processes of creation of these new GMOs.
A blindfolded leap into the void
Therefore, knowledge gaps remain on the real risks and threats related to the new GMOs for wild biodiversity, ecosystems and health.
We are faced with a policy that responds to the pressures of the agro-industry, accepting a science that renounces rigor and method, skipping dutiful steps to open new profit spaces to industry through patents and privatives.
The possible introduction of the new GMOs in the Italian agri-food sector would seriously jeopardize the quality and resilience of the entire sector, reinforcing an industrial agriculture model that requires input external (pesticides primarily, ed) that impact both human health and the environment, as well as weakening the resilience of agriculture, standardizing products and flattening agro-biodiversity.
For sustainable and agroecological agriculture
What international commitments and, above all, more and more citizens around the world are asking for a truly sustainable and agroecological agriculture, which protects biodiversity and resources and provides healthy and good quality food, as organic and biodynamic producers are already doing.
The Coalition Italy Free from GMOs therefore asks politics to choose the safe path for everyone: public research must be financed and carried out, but it must be transparent, making an effort to demonstrate the risks of technological innovations before choosing to compromise the GMO-free supply chain by endorsing the open field cultivation of NGT products.
Marta Strinati
Note
(1) Marta Strinati, Dario Dongo. New GMOs, the blitz of Italian deputies with the excuse of war. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade)... 17.5.22
(2) Dario Dongo, Alessandra Mei. New GMOs, deregulation in sight in the European Union? GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade)... 10.3.23
(3) The associations adhering to the GMO-Free Italy Coalition are: ACU, AGORÀ, AIAB, ALTRAGRICOLTURABIO, ARI, ASCI, ASSOCIATION FOR BIODYNAMIC AGRICULTURE, CIVILTÀ PEASANT, COORDINAMENTOZEROOGM, CROCEVIA, DEAFAL, ÉGALITÉ, EUROPEAN CONSUMERS APS, EQUIVITA, FAIRWATCH, FIRAB, GREENPEACE, ISDE, LEGAMBIENTE, LIPU, NAVDANYA, PRONATURA, RESS ROMA, RIES, SLOW FOOD ITALIA, TERRA!, TERRANUOVA, TERRANUOVA ONLUS, TRANSFORM, USB, VAS, WWF.
