European fast-food consumers demand long, straight chips, which means European potatoes need to be sizeable. But this summer, Europe’s weather had other ideas.
A punishing drought meant Dutch farmer Hendrik Jan ten Cate was forced to spray water from a local canal on his potatoes to prevent them shrinking. “Irrigation is very expensive. About 10 per cent of my costs was water this summer,” he says.
“Farmers who could not irrigate lost half their harvest.”Ten Cate’s other outlays were up 25 per cent, he says, because of the high price of gas. Fuel for tractors, fertilisers and pesticides all got more expensive.He can see only one answer if Europeans still want to eat home-produced food: gene-edited crops, which are more resistant to drought and extreme heat.“Climate change is coming faster than we are developing new crops,” he says. “We need new techniques. There is a big danger to food production in Europe.”Gene editing is a form of genetic engineering where genes can be deleted or added from the same or similar species. It is distinct from genetic modification, which introduces DNA from foreign species.Proponents argue that gene editing is the same as conventional plant breeding but simply accelerated, with greater accuracy. “If you introduce a foreign gene, it’s a GMO. If you just change the genetic letters within the organism, it’s conventional-like,” says Petra Jorasch of lobby group Euroseeds, which represents plant breeders. “This is also what you do with conventional breeding methods.”That is not how it is currently seen in Europe.
The European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court, decided in 2018 that gene editing should come under GMO regulation, where regulators must give high priority to potential risks.When GMO technology first arrived in Europe in the 2000s it met fierce opposition in a region that prides itself on the quality and provenance of its food. Products were labelled “frankenfoods” and trial fields were attacked by protesters. Regulators tightened rules so much that only one type of genetically modified wheat has ever been grown in the EU (although dozens of crops are now authorised for imports, mostly for animal feed).Now, the mood on gene editing in Europe is shifting. In September, agriculture ministers from the 27 member states urged Brussels to speed up a re-examination of GMO regulation.
The following month, the European Commission confirmed that it would issue a proposal to ease regulation for some gene-editing technologies in the second quarter of 2023.The moves come during a year in which widespread drought cut harvests across Europe, with Spain losing half its olive crop. The war in Ukraine has reduced exports from a country dubbed the bread basket of Europe. The drought and conflict, combined with high energy costs, have driven up food prices and caused shortages in the developing world.“The situation has changed. We have to be able to produce a sufficient supply of food. We need to take advantage of technology to adapt to climate change and maintain biodiversity,” says Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa-Cogeca, the EU farmers’ union.But fears of “frankenfoods” run deep. Environmentalists and activists say agricultural companies have seized on climate change to foist untested technology on the public. Solving hunger is a seductive argument, they say, to win over politicians and sceptical populations without evidence to back it up.“There is no reason to deregulate gene editing,” says Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at NGO Friends of the Earth Europe.
“It is a new technology developed in the last 10 years. We don’t know how it might impact on nature, on agriculture and how the consumer interest will be affected.”Yet Europe is now an outlier among large economies in treating gene-edited crops in the same way as GMOs, and some lawmakers are beginning to believe the risks are outweighed by the potential benefits for farmers, for the economy and for the environment.“Plants obtained with new genomic techniques could help build a more resilient and sustainable agri-food system,” said Stella Kyriakides, European commissioner for health and food safety, when launching a consultation on her proposal this year.
“This has been the guiding principle for EU food policy in the past and will always continue to be so.”Pros and consScientists have been crossbreeding species to create more resilient crops for decades.For example, researchers have produced a strain of wheat that combines the high yield of one type with the solid stem of another, which helps it resist wind and rain.Advocates say gene editing does much the same, more effectively. It could, for example, help develop wheat that provides nutrients to the soil, says Pesonen, reducing the need for fertiliser.“They are fundamentally different to GMOs,” Pesonen says. “Imagine the improvement that we could get in the best-case scenario, both in terms of the nutrients or the protein content and the competitiveness.
”Hopes are also high for creating crops that can withstand the effects of the shifting climate. “If we could breed crops based on what we know on genetics to be more drought tolerant, more saline tolerant, more heat tolerant, and to produce more under certain conditions, that definitely could help us in terms of both food security as well as adaptation to climate change,” says Ismahane Elouafi, chief scientist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.Critics of the technology see this argument as a canard. They say the European Commission’s move is driven not by science, but by agribusiness lobbying, and that the current regulatory regime should be maintained. They are also concerned about the potential lack of transparency for consumers.
Christoph Then, of German NGO Testbiotech which warns on the risks of genetic engineering, says the intended and unintended changes caused by gene editing could go far beyond what can be expected from conventional breeding. “We think that there needs to be proper risk assessment. We think the current [regulatory] framework is appropriate,” he says.Molecular geneticist Michael Antoniou at King’s College London warns that gene-editing technology is not as precise as claimed, is not the equivalent to breeding and is no different to genetic modification.He fears unintended changes in the gene’s biochemistry and its composition. “You risk the possibility of creating new toxins and new allergens or adding to known toxins and allergens,” he says.
Martin Häusling, a German MEP who is the Green party’s spokesperson for agriculture, says there are other ways for farmers to tackle climate change, such as crop rotation, soil improvement techniques and naturally adapted seeds rather than turning to genetic engineering.You need to start now to actually address the problems that are escalating. If you start five years from now, it would be too lateHe and other opponents also charge that gene-edited products will further strengthen the grip of “Big Ag”, the large agricultural input companies, especially seed providers such as Bayer, Corteva and BASF.
Nah.
The problem with genetic editing or modification (I’m not sure the distinction the article makes is real) was never the underlying technology or principle (in my mind) but the legal and regulatory framework that it would operate in. My own first hang-up is intellectual property. If you are introducing something into widescale general use such that its seeds and pollen are blowing all over the place, that ought to be public domain. The current legal situation where a farmer whose field gets cross-pollinated by a GMO strain, and who knowingly takes advantage of the improved seeds, is committing patent infringement, is morally repugnant and absurd!
All these worries, of ecological damage from lack of oversight, and profiteering, and anti-human and anti-commercial regulations imposed for the profit of small interest groups, all these worries get *worse* when we are more inclined to adopt them out of desperation.
>On his dried-out polder in the southern Netherlands
Their own fault.
Weather permitting they could have enough water during summer if they work with nature, rather than demanding that nature acts in a way they want.
There is usually enough water available during the winter season to ‘fill up’ the ground water to high levels, which makes the soil soggy, obviously, but they don’t want that and therefore pump it out immediately, which means that they themselves fuck up the “winter surplus = summer reserve” balance.
I think the biggest problem with GMO is that just a handful of Western companies maintain a stranglehold on the market. They are simply not trustworthy, if you are from a non-Western country, because they can fuck you over any time due to political pressure. And transitioning to conventional farming is not done with a snap of the fingers. It’s probably why Russian banned it altogether, not because it turns you into a potato, food security is a serious matter.
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European fast-food consumers demand long, straight chips, which means European potatoes need to be sizeable. But this summer, Europe’s weather had other ideas.
A punishing drought meant Dutch farmer Hendrik Jan ten Cate was forced to spray water from a local canal on his potatoes to prevent them shrinking. “Irrigation is very expensive. About 10 per cent of my costs was water this summer,” he says.
“Farmers who could not irrigate lost half their harvest.”Ten Cate’s other outlays were up 25 per cent, he says, because of the high price of gas. Fuel for tractors, fertilisers and pesticides all got more expensive.He can see only one answer if Europeans still want to eat home-produced food: gene-edited crops, which are more resistant to drought and extreme heat.“Climate change is coming faster than we are developing new crops,” he says. “We need new techniques. There is a big danger to food production in Europe.”Gene editing is a form of genetic engineering where genes can be deleted or added from the same or similar species. It is distinct from genetic modification, which introduces DNA from foreign species.Proponents argue that gene editing is the same as conventional plant breeding but simply accelerated, with greater accuracy. “If you introduce a foreign gene, it’s a GMO. If you just change the genetic letters within the organism, it’s conventional-like,” says Petra Jorasch of lobby group Euroseeds, which represents plant breeders. “This is also what you do with conventional breeding methods.”That is not how it is currently seen in Europe.
The European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court, decided in 2018 that gene editing should come under GMO regulation, where regulators must give high priority to potential risks.When GMO technology first arrived in Europe in the 2000s it met fierce opposition in a region that prides itself on the quality and provenance of its food. Products were labelled “frankenfoods” and trial fields were attacked by protesters. Regulators tightened rules so much that only one type of genetically modified wheat has ever been grown in the EU (although dozens of crops are now authorised for imports, mostly for animal feed).Now, the mood on gene editing in Europe is shifting. In September, agriculture ministers from the 27 member states urged Brussels to speed up a re-examination of GMO regulation.
The following month, the European Commission confirmed that it would issue a proposal to ease regulation for some gene-editing technologies in the second quarter of 2023.The moves come during a year in which widespread drought cut harvests across Europe, with Spain losing half its olive crop. The war in Ukraine has reduced exports from a country dubbed the bread basket of Europe. The drought and conflict, combined with high energy costs, have driven up food prices and caused shortages in the developing world.“The situation has changed. We have to be able to produce a sufficient supply of food. We need to take advantage of technology to adapt to climate change and maintain biodiversity,” says Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa-Cogeca, the EU farmers’ union.But fears of “frankenfoods” run deep. Environmentalists and activists say agricultural companies have seized on climate change to foist untested technology on the public. Solving hunger is a seductive argument, they say, to win over politicians and sceptical populations without evidence to back it up.“There is no reason to deregulate gene editing,” says Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at NGO Friends of the Earth Europe.
“It is a new technology developed in the last 10 years. We don’t know how it might impact on nature, on agriculture and how the consumer interest will be affected.”Yet Europe is now an outlier among large economies in treating gene-edited crops in the same way as GMOs, and some lawmakers are beginning to believe the risks are outweighed by the potential benefits for farmers, for the economy and for the environment.“Plants obtained with new genomic techniques could help build a more resilient and sustainable agri-food system,” said Stella Kyriakides, European commissioner for health and food safety, when launching a consultation on her proposal this year.
“This has been the guiding principle for EU food policy in the past and will always continue to be so.”Pros and consScientists have been crossbreeding species to create more resilient crops for decades.For example, researchers have produced a strain of wheat that combines the high yield of one type with the solid stem of another, which helps it resist wind and rain.Advocates say gene editing does much the same, more effectively. It could, for example, help develop wheat that provides nutrients to the soil, says Pesonen, reducing the need for fertiliser.“They are fundamentally different to GMOs,” Pesonen says. “Imagine the improvement that we could get in the best-case scenario, both in terms of the nutrients or the protein content and the competitiveness.
”Hopes are also high for creating crops that can withstand the effects of the shifting climate. “If we could breed crops based on what we know on genetics to be more drought tolerant, more saline tolerant, more heat tolerant, and to produce more under certain conditions, that definitely could help us in terms of both food security as well as adaptation to climate change,” says Ismahane Elouafi, chief scientist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.Critics of the technology see this argument as a canard. They say the European Commission’s move is driven not by science, but by agribusiness lobbying, and that the current regulatory regime should be maintained. They are also concerned about the potential lack of transparency for consumers.
Christoph Then, of German NGO Testbiotech which warns on the risks of genetic engineering, says the intended and unintended changes caused by gene editing could go far beyond what can be expected from conventional breeding. “We think that there needs to be proper risk assessment. We think the current [regulatory] framework is appropriate,” he says.Molecular geneticist Michael Antoniou at King’s College London warns that gene-editing technology is not as precise as claimed, is not the equivalent to breeding and is no different to genetic modification.He fears unintended changes in the gene’s biochemistry and its composition. “You risk the possibility of creating new toxins and new allergens or adding to known toxins and allergens,” he says.
Martin Häusling, a German MEP who is the Green party’s spokesperson for agriculture, says there are other ways for farmers to tackle climate change, such as crop rotation, soil improvement techniques and naturally adapted seeds rather than turning to genetic engineering.You need to start now to actually address the problems that are escalating. If you start five years from now, it would be too lateHe and other opponents also charge that gene-edited products will further strengthen the grip of “Big Ag”, the large agricultural input companies, especially seed providers such as Bayer, Corteva and BASF.
Nah.
The problem with genetic editing or modification (I’m not sure the distinction the article makes is real) was never the underlying technology or principle (in my mind) but the legal and regulatory framework that it would operate in. My own first hang-up is intellectual property. If you are introducing something into widescale general use such that its seeds and pollen are blowing all over the place, that ought to be public domain. The current legal situation where a farmer whose field gets cross-pollinated by a GMO strain, and who knowingly takes advantage of the improved seeds, is committing patent infringement, is morally repugnant and absurd!
All these worries, of ecological damage from lack of oversight, and profiteering, and anti-human and anti-commercial regulations imposed for the profit of small interest groups, all these worries get *worse* when we are more inclined to adopt them out of desperation.
>On his dried-out polder in the southern Netherlands
Their own fault.
Weather permitting they could have enough water during summer if they work with nature, rather than demanding that nature acts in a way they want.
There is usually enough water available during the winter season to ‘fill up’ the ground water to high levels, which makes the soil soggy, obviously, but they don’t want that and therefore pump it out immediately, which means that they themselves fuck up the “winter surplus = summer reserve” balance.
I think the biggest problem with GMO is that just a handful of Western companies maintain a stranglehold on the market. They are simply not trustworthy, if you are from a non-Western country, because they can fuck you over any time due to political pressure. And transitioning to conventional farming is not done with a snap of the fingers. It’s probably why Russian banned it altogether, not because it turns you into a potato, food security is a serious matter.