CIBIO-InBIO JOINS SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY: GENOME EDITED ORGANISMS ARE NOT GMOs

On July 25, 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that organisms obtained by precise genome edition technologies such as CRISPR are not exempt from the EU GMO legislation.

Following this regulation, the scientific community called for an urgent review and amendment of the European legislation on new breeding technologies using genome edition. The position paper state that organisms that have undergone simple and targeted genome edits through modern technologies follow the same principles that classical breeding techniques, but with even higher efficiency and precision. Therefore, genome edited organisms should not be subject to the provisions of the GMO Directive, but instead should fall under the regulatory regime that applies to classically bred varieties.

The document, signed by CIBIO-InBIO members and scientists from more than 100 European scientific institutions, concludes that subjecting crops obtained through modern genome editing to GMO regulations will deny European consumers, producers, researchers and entrepreneurs important opportunities in sustainable agriculture. One year after the ECJ regulation and following the first position paper, more than 70 scientists from 12 Portuguese institutions signed the open letter calling for a review of GMO Directive to correctly reflect scientific progress in biotechnology.

To read the European Position Paper, please click here.

To read the open letter in Portuguese, please click here.