On 25 July 2018 a key ruling was published by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which left no space for interpretation: existing GMO regulations must be applied to all products produced from new techniques of genetic engineering like CRISPR-Cas. Such techniques - often referred to by developers as ‘gene-editing’ or ‘new breeding techniques’ - have emerged since Europe’s GMO law was introduced in 2001, and are currently being applied by developers to food crops, trees, farm animals and insects. Dozens of patents have already been filed in this field by the big agrochemical corporations like Bayer, BASF, Dow Agrosciences and Monsanto.

Industry lobby groups have waged a lobby campaign for over a decade to avoid these regulations for their new generation of GM technology. Infuriated by the ECJ ruling, they called upon the new Commission to re-open the EU GMO regulations. Their aim – to get products from these new techniques exempted from EU rules – would mean that new GMO products would not be tested, monitored or labelled. The US Government, too, jumped on the bandwagon to push the EU to follow the US approach, which would mean nearly complete deregulation of new GM products.

Trade pressure

Immediately after the ruling the US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue called it a “setback” that was “unjustifiably stigmatizing new technologies”. He described the EU’s rules on GMO “regressive and outdated”, and advised Europe to seek input from its trading partners on how to implement the ruling. Perdue added, “USDA [US Department of Agriculture] will re-double its efforts to work with partners globally towards science- and risk-based regulatory approaches.” However, in the US most GMOs do not undergo any evaluation to speak of.

Indeed, on 5 September 2018 EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis met with US Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Policy Affairs, Ted McKinney. McKinney expressed the US’ “frustration” with the ECJ ruling which according to him “hammered the US and other third countries as trading partners”.

According to the minutes of this meeting, obtained by Corporate Europe Observatory, McKinney said that the EU “is now expected to better reflect on the impact of the ruling and realise that EU legislation needs to change”. He also offered the EU help from the US in that direction.

McKinney also claimed that the US Government had reassured two European biotech companies that allegedly had plans to relocate to the US, by saying they were confident that the EU would “realise” that it would have to change its GMO rules.

Bringing down rules on biotechnology products in other political blocks or countries is a key focus for the US in international trade talks. When the new NAFTA agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada, concluded in October 2018, includes a new chapter on agricultural biotechnology. Politico commented that experts view this as a “major step in America’s effort to export its biotech model around the world”. According to the American Seed Trade Association, this “sends a clear message to other US trading partners, like the European Union and China, which have been criticized for having an unpredictable regulatory approach”.

The European animal feed lobby group FEFAC, with a great stake in GM soy trade with the US, told FeedNavigator that the ECJ ruling could prove to be “a non-tariff trade barrier”, effectively “blocking EU market access to imports of US soy and other feed grains”.

This is not the first time the US Government has got involved. In 2016, Corporate Europe Observatory, GeneWatch, and Greenpeace revealed how the European Commission had shelved a legal opinion that at least one new genetic engineering technique would have to undergo the usual safety testing and labelling, following intense lobbying by the US government.

In advance of a meeting with DG SANTE on 7 October 2015, the US Mission to the EU said “it came to their attention” that the Commission’s legal opinion was going to classify one particular gene-editing technique “as a GM technique”. The US mission warned DG SANTE that this would be “another blow to agriculture and technology”. This suggested that the US Mission had access to very sensitive political intelligence regarding the Commission’s thinking on the regulation of new techniques.