Plants and animals created by innovative gene-editing technology have been genetically modified and should be regulated as such, the EU’s top court has ruled.



The landmark decision ends 10 years of debate in Europe about what is – and is not – a GM food, with a victory for environmentalists, and a bitter blow to Europe’s biotech industry.

It also marks a setback for UK scientists who took advantage of a legal grey area to begin field trials of gene edited camelina crops, augmented with Omega-3 fish oils.

Greenpeace said that the ruling meant the British government – along with Belgium, Sweden and Finland – was now obliged to “revoke” the green light for the trials until appropriate precautions had been taken.

In their ruling, the EU judges said: “Organisms obtained by mutagenesis are GMOs [genetically modified organisms] … It follows that those organisms come, in principle, within the scope of the GMO directive and are subject to the obligations laid down [therein].”

The court sided with the French agricultural trades union, Confédération Paysanne, which brought the case, arguing that new and unconventional in vitro mutagenesis techniques were likely to be used to produce herbicide-resistant plants, with potential health risks.

A study published in the journal Nature last week found that the gene-editing technology Crispr-Cas9 can cause significantly greater genetic distortions than expected, with potential “pathogenic consequences”.

Gene editing alters the genomes of a living species by slicing genome strands in a bid to remove undesirable traits, without inserting foreign DNA.

The US biotech firm Cibus has already tried to bypass the EU’s decision-making process to bring its herbicide-resistant ODM oilseed rape to market, according to documents released under freedom of information laws.



But Prof Johnathan Napier, who leads the UK’s field trials of Crispr-edited plants at Rothamsted Research, denounced the court ruling as “a backward step, not progress.”

He said: “This is a very disappointing outcome, and one that will hinder European innovation, impact and scientific advance. The classification of genome-edited organisms as falling under the GMO directive could slam the door shut on this revolutionary technology.”

When the organism’s cells repair, their DNA is rearranged in a way that the biotech industry believes will safely allow crops to develop, for instance, drought-resistant characteristics, so boosting innovation, jobs and trade.

Beat Späth, the green director of EuropaBio, which represents companies such as Dow, Dupont and Monsanto, said: “Billions of euros have been spent on research and development into genome editing, by taxpayers and industry alike. The big risk is that all this money will now not be translated into products for Europe’s farmers.”

A spokesman for Rothamsted Research said that it was “impossible to say how much we spend on gene-editing techniques”.

Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace EU’s food policy director, said the court’s ruling had prioritised the protection of human health and the environment.

“Releasing these new GMOs into the environment without proper safety measures is illegal and irresponsible,” she said, “particularly given that gene editing can lead to unintended side effects. The European commission and European governments must now ensure that all new GMOs are fully tested and labelled, and that any field trials are brought under GMO rules.”