The end of the year is a useful and important time for reflection – on where we are, where we are going and how we are all connected.
For years, many people assumed the EU would hold the line on genetically modified food – ensuring labelling, traceability and transparency even as the UK dismantled its own safeguards. But the EU’s legislators are now set to remove those protections.
The new deal being negotiated means that gene-edited organisms – what the UK calls ‘precision bred’ and what the EU calls ‘new genomic techniques’ – will no longer be subject to risk assessment, monitoring or traceability. The deal also means no liability regime, no meaningful coexistence safeguards for organic, conventional or GMO-free supply chains and no mechanism to withdraw approval if risks emerge later.
This matters because the EU’s long-held high standards were one of the biggest threats to the UK deregulation regime.
If enacted, it leaves our judicial review as the only meaningful challenge to gene-editing deregulation anywhere in the UK–EU. That means our challenge to Stop Hidden GMOs may soon be the last line of defence for the public’s right to know what we are eating and what we are releasing into the environment.
With both Westminster and Brussels turning away from transparency, it becomes more meaningful and urgent to support us in halting hidden GMOs in our food and environment and force proper scrutiny.
We have come so far in our fundraising appeal – 63% funded in a relative few months. But we urgently need your support to continue.
If you have already donated, thank you! If you are able to donate again, or encourage others to do so, it will make a real difference to how far we can take this case.
With gratitude and sincere wishes for a happy, healthy GMO-free new year.