21 April 2016 / Greenpeace, Gene Watch UK and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) today published internal European Commission documents on TTIP and new genetic engineering methods such as CRISPR / Cas. They show that the United States is exerting enormous pressure in a bid to stop plants engineered with new genome editing technologies from being subject to EU genetic engineering regulation. According to industry and the US government, these plants should be commercialised without having to undergo the authorisation process. Several plants produced by genome editing methods are already excluded from regulation in the United States. As it can be concluded from the documents, the EU Commission intends to have a much stricter regulatory approach than the US.

The published documents confirm earlier Testbiotech analysis indicating that free trade agreements such as CETA and TTIP will weaken both EU safety standards for genetically engineered plants and the precautionary principle.