GMO Crops May Be a No Go in the European Union But They Represent One of Humanity’s Best Bets for Food Security

November 14, 2018 – The European Union has outraged the scientific community for the past 17 years in creating a regulatory genetics research environment on food crops that bans their use and import from the continent. This has been an impediment to sub-Saharan African countries from adopting genetically modified crop strains where Europe is the primary importer of what is grown.

At the latest World Trade Organization (WTO), 13 countries have decided to take a very different approach. They include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Jordan, Paraguay, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam and the West African Economic Community. In an unanimous decision the group have adopted polices focused on using genome editing and other agricultural science innovations to give farmers access to more environmentally sustainable products. They equate the European Union’s position to be based on misinformation and political posturing.

There seems to be a new form of genetic hairsplitting these days in the field of genomics and agriculture. There is GMO, gene-editing, transgenesis, and cisgenesis. All of these are really using the modification of the plant genome to improve it to meet specific requirements.

GMO – refers to genetically altering a plant or animal.

Gene-editing – refers to using biotechnology tools to remove genes from a plant’s genome to enhance the plant.

Transgenesis – refers to the biotechnological process of introducing genetic information from any animal or plant that is not sexually compatible with the recipient permanently altering the subsequent offspring.

Cisgenesis – is a form of transgenesis using a natural gene from a sexually compatible plant to alter the target plant and affecting its offspring.

With the exception of transgenesis, none of these procedures is incompatible with more traditional plant breeding techniques. States Kevin Folta, horticulturalist at the University of Florida, “There is no reason to regulate them [referring to gene-editing] with any more rigour.” The more rigour reference is to traditional agricultural technologies like selective breeding.

For Africa, the ban on GMO and gene-edited crops impact the livelihood of smallholding farms throughout the continent. With the European Union, Africa’s largest trading partner, nearly $16 billion US of agricultural products shipped north each year it means farmers hoping to sell to their northern neighbour are banned from using GMO, gene-edited, transgenic and cisgenic crops.

States Nigel Taylor, of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, in St. Louis, Missouri, “It’s incredibly disappointing and very frustrating. There’s a need in Africa for smaller farmers to secure their food supply and that means creating better crops. With climate change and urbanization, it’s important that agriculture can adapt. Gene editing was going to be a powerful tool to achieve that and it’s faced a setback.” Taylor is using CRISPR, the gene-editing biotechnology to eliminate genes causing brown streak disease in cassava, a tuberous staple grown in sub-Saharan Africa. Brown streak has been a scourge to cassava farmers for years, wiping out entire fields.

Adoption of CRISPR biotechnology is being stopped because of European Union policies. For African food scientists such as Bode Okoloku, who grew up in Nigeria and is today an assistant professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Tennessee, he sees using gene-editing as being even more promising than other forms of GMO. He advocates that African scientists need to form a lobby group to influence government policymakers in sub-Saharan countries to use tools like CRISPR. Okoloku is currently experimenting with the biotechnology to improve African sweet potato and corn.

The WTO endorsement by the 13 countries and the West African Economic Community may begin to alter Europe’s perspective on these important advances in agricultural science. Stefan Jansson, Professor of Plant Physiology, at Ümea University in Sweden, calls the European system of regulating GMO science “stupid.” He points out that it appears that governments are being swayed by citizens who are listening to organizations such as Greenpeace more than listening to their scientists.