European F&B businesses urge robust labeling of NGTs amid deregulation plans

06 Sep 2024 --- Over 370 food businesses from 16 member states have written to the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council, calling for transparent and rigorous labeling of new genomic techniques (NGTs) amid the European Commission’s plans to relax regulations around genetically modified organisms (GMOs.)

“Consumers prefer non-GMO food quality, and NGTs are GMOs. Organic and non-GMO producers have worked hard to build reliable non-GMO production chains and secure quality assurance programs,” Alexander Hissting, managing director of the Association Food without Genetic Engineering (Verband Lebensmittel ohne Gentechnik or VLOG), tells Food Ingredients First.

“But without mandatory labeling of NGT and without detection methods or even the knowledge about the genetic modification NGT-plants have gone through, it will be extremely difficult and costly to keep up the non-GMO promise in organic and non-GMO production.”

The signatories to the open letter include key F&B stakeholders such as REWE Group, SPAR Austria, the EU drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt and the organic supermarket chain Biocoop.

Industry players, including Hissting, gave the letter to Dr. István Nagy, Hungary’s agriculture minister and current EU council president for Agriculture and Fisheries.

Distinguishing NGTs and non-GMO

The Commission defines NGTs as techniques that can alter an organism’s genetic material. These enable precise and efficient plant breeding, opening up new possibilities for developing plant varieties and securing the global food supply.

In July 2023, the EC published a proposal to deregulate NGTs, which are also known as GMOs under EU law.

The proposal distinguishes NGT plants into 1 NGT and 2 NGT categories. The less-modified 1 NGT category is considered equivalent to conventional plants and requires fewer further controls for health risk assessments, labeling and verification.

The second category of 2 NGT has to undergo checks for GMOs but with more relaxed timelines and risk assessment criteria.

With growing consumer demands for clean labels and sustainable food products, adapting to changes in preferences arising from the EU deregulation is a possible challenge.

While the signatories welcome the EU Parliament's call for mandatory labelling and traceability for all products produced with NGTs, they fear that an absence of rigorous labelling rules and risk assessment checks could put the existence of organic and non-GMO industries at risk.

Targeting industry coexistence

The signatories also call for robust detection methods, EU-wide mandatory, nationally and regionally adapted coexistence measures between GMO and non-GMO industries, liability rules in accordance with the polluter-pays principle and a compensation fund for unavoidable contamination.

With growing consumer demands for clean labels and sustainable food, adapting to changes in preferences arising from the EU deregulation is a possible challenge.However, Hissting notes that developing coexistence measures, particularly, poses critical challenges but is “possible.”

“In cultivation, the success also depends on the specific crops, the size of each production system and the agriculture structure in the respective region or country. Measures could include defined thresholds for contamination thresholds, distance rules between GMO and organic/non-GMO cultivation, the obligation of GMO growers to inform their neighbor farmers, public maps for GMO cultivation, defined procedures for cleaning farming and logistic machinery,” he tells us.

“Extremely important again is the obligation of GMO labeling and the possibility to run fast and cost-efficient tests on crops and food ingredients.”

Changing trends amid deregulation

With growing consumer demands for clean labels and sustainable food products, adapting to changes in preferences arising from the EU deregulation is another possible challenge.

However, Hissting says the food industry has “proven its flexibility and ability to adapt to new customer demands on many other issues. But clarity on the precise regulations and sufficient conversion time is necessary.”

He adds that while it might be too soon for F&B players to start adapting to the deregulation as the future legal landscape is “very unclear,” research consortiums on the issue of technology and innovation to increase traceability and detection of NGTs in the supply chain are active.

The signatories say that the timing for their demands is pertinent as the EU agriculture ministers have not yet reached a consensus on the Commission’s deregulation plans.

The potential deregulation of NGTs could have wide-ranging implications for international trade, especially with countries with stricter GMO regulations. In the EU, for example, France, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Poland, Denmark, Malta, Slovenia, Italy and Croatia ban GMOs.

“Europe has built a reputation for supplying high-quality, safe and sustainable food products. One of the quality aspects is non-GMO. Suppose most NGTs are deregulated as envisioned by the EC. In that case, the reputation of European food might suffer, and certain companies supplying GMO-sensitive markets might lose their export opportunity,” he concludes.

By Anvisha Manral