After decades of wilful ignorance, authorities in the UK, Switzerland and the European Union should have new NGT regulations by the end of 2026. The problem is their policies are not aligned and, in the case of the European Union, are neither coherent nor rational. Intense stakeholder pressure has led to ad hoc solutions which will not address food chain sustainability.
Briefly, the British and EU NGT regulations divide seed breeding technologies into two categories: NGTs where modifications that could occur naturally or via conventional breeding (eg, targeted mutagenesis, cisgenesis); and GMOs where genetic modifications often involve foreign DNA. NGTs have a simplified authorization process and no labelling on the final products whereas the GMOs fall under stricter authorization and labelling requirements. The incoming Swiss law does not have a two-tiered system and requires all technologies undergo the same (strict) authorization process.
Regulatory Divergence
After the problems of previous GMO policies, one would have expected authorities to have coordinated their new regulations … at least in Europe.
The first thing regulators should have agreed upon is what to call the seed breeding technologies. In the EU, they are called NGTs (New Genomic Techniques). In the UK they are known as Precision-Bred Organisms (PBOs). Switzerland also uses the NGT acronym, but it stands for Non-Human Gene Technology. Meanwhile NGO groups like GM Watch call them “GMO-NGTs” to ensure that the public fear of GMOs is transferred onto the new technologies.
The UK regulation focuses on the product (what the plant is) while the EU and Switzerland consider the process or technology (how it was made). This process-based approach had handcuffed the EU’s GMO policies and as many NGT plants are identical to traditional plants, the EU will likely struggle to continue to justify the technology-focused strategy.
The British and Swiss regulations protect intellectual property rights (patents) while the EU is trying to find a way to prevent large corporations from dominating the seed market. They will introduce an expert group a year after the implementation of the regulation to consider patent applications on an ad hoc basis. Without clear patent protection, will more European researchers leave the EU?
These researchers likely won’t move to Switzerland where they have also added a clause to their NGT regulation requiring respect for the “dignity of living beings”. If all plants have dignity, then they have rights that cannot be obstructed. As civil society groups have been given a say in the new approval process and Switzerland has the right to refuse imports of any EU-approved NGTs, it is safe to assume that Swiss consumers will be doing even more of their grocery shopping in neighbouring countries.
Such diverging policies will create more consumer confusion and activist opportunity.
Adhocracy
The EU NGT regulation is a product of stakeholder compromises rather than a rational scientific approach. It was introduced as a means to counterbalance the stifling Farm2Fork strategy and allow European agriculture to survive the EU’s Green Deal chokehold. At the same time, many anti-GMO activist positions had to be integrated into the regulation (restrictions on patents, traceability and herbicide-tolerant plants). This has led to many irrational ad hoc compromises.
- The EU regulation plans to incentivize technologies that support EU sustainability goals like pest resistance and drought tolerance. But what about innovations that increase yields allowing farmers to rewild their less productive fields? Or cover cropping (with herbicides) to improve soil health? Sustainability is an emotional value which is difficult to define in a regulation. All researchers will defend their innovations as more sustainable, only to be determined on an ad hoc basis.
- If an NGT is herbicide-tolerant, it cannot be considered under the looser first category (it is immediately classified as a GMO). This is not at all related to the research or technology but from the organic food industry lobby’s long-standing campaign against herbicides.
- Member States will determine whether organic farmers can use the NGTs.
- The promise to establish an expert group to examine the NGT patent question at a later date is but one more example of the ad hoc nature of the EU’s regulation.
There is no scientific basis to these corollaries but indicates a rather desperate attempt by European officials to push anything through their process-based NGT regulation. It is not bureaucracy but rather, adhocracy.
Adhocracy is a term coined by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to a ‘flexible, adaptable, and informal form of organization defined by a lack of formal structure’. Rather than laws and regulations, an adhocratic system would have specialized multidisciplinary teams assess each situation on a case-by-case basis. Is this the best approach to govern NGT policies?
Adhocracy might work for self-governing online communities but not for researchers where spontaneous decisions without any scientific basis or rationale can upend scientific developments at a moment’s notice. For researchers, the EU’s adhocratic NGT regulation is worse than no regulation.
As researchers migrate to the best environment to develop their products and technologies, the Swiss and EU regulators should align their policies with the British laws on NGTs. If not, plus ça change.
David Zaruk is a professor based in Brussels writing on environmental-health risk policy within the EU Bubble.
