Poland has put forward a new proposal for the future regulation of plants obtained from new genetic engineering (NGTs). This has come shortly before the next meeting of experts from member states on 14 February. As before, the plan is to approve most NGT plants without requiring mandatory risk assessment and to treat them as equivalent to conventionally-bred plants. However, in contrast to the previous proposals, there would no longer be any restrictions in regard to patents on NGT plants. The option for member states to issue national cultivation bans was also cancelled.
Companies would not have to give up their patents, but merely provide related information. The Polish Council Presidency is thus aligning itself more closely with the seed industry, which only wants to grant access to patented seeds in return for payment of licence fees.
This goes against the proposal made by the EU Parliament, which wants to ban patents on NGT plants. If the new proposal put forward by Poland were to be adopted, it would significantly exacerbate the problems with monopolization of seeds: Deregulation may allow patented NGT plants to reach the market more quickly. Many of the patents would also cover conventional breeding.
This would expose plant breeding in Europe, as in the US, to an extreme concentration process in which a few large companies control access to the plant material needed by all breeders.
Testbiotech has proposed a complete ban on patents on plants that are obtained from conventional breeding and to strictly limit patent protection to plants that have been genetically engineered.
Testbiotech is also demanding that the EU Commission withdraw its proposal for deregulation on which the Polish proposal is based. The EU Commission has proposed that genetically engineered plants with less than 20 genetic changes should be treated in the same way as conventionally-bred plants and be marketed without any risk assessment. However, as current research shows, there is no scientific basis for this ‘magic threshold’.
Contact
Christoph Then, info@testbiotech.org, Tel + 49 151 54638040
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