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Hardly any NGT plants ready-to-market worldwide, hardly any climate-resilient varieties
Dr Samson Simon at the Non-GMO Summit 2024. Photo: Nina Werth
Climate-resilient NGTs: Advertising promises and market reality diverge
There are currently only five non-transgenic NGT plants on the market worldwide, none of them in the EU: These include a tomato in Japan that supposedly lowers blood pressure, lettuce with a longer shelf life or maize with a modified starch composition in North and South America and Asia. Around 15 other plants are about to be authorised, explained Simon. There are around 150 NGT plants in the commercialisation pipelines of genetic engineering companies that are primarily consumer-oriented (Fig. 1; consumption oriented). The argument often used by NGT proponents in favour of the use of NGT, the development of climate-resilient plants (Fig. 1; subset of "abiotic stress"), hardly plays a role, Simon noted. The sources of his analysis were a study by Dr Eva Gelinsky on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) and data from the US Department of Agriculture.
Current genetic engineering regulation must remain in place
Biotechnology is undergoing a profound change due to the tools of genome editing, Samson Simon noted: "Genomes can be reshaped, redesigned or remixed on a revolutionary scale", explained the scientific advisor at BfN. The possibilities seem limitless. At the same time, knowledge about the impacts of genome changes on organisms and ecosystems is very limited, he emphasised. In the BfN's view, the "NGT constructs" must also be subjected to an environmental impact assessment in the future because the new methods do not rule out any risks. In a dossier from February 2024, the BfN stated that deregulation contradicts the precautionary principle.
Unscientific categorisation
Simon described the definition of the NGT-1 category, which allows up to 20 changes in the genome, as arbitrary and rejected it as scientifically unjustifiable. Any change to the genome could have severe consequences and the interactions should not be underestimated. Simon refuted the argument that changes can also be brought about by the "gene scissors" using conventional breeding methods and stated that the BfN had found distinct differences.