France asks EU to regulate whether gene edited crops are GMOs

France has asked the European Court of Justice to rule on the legal classification of products generated by new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs).

The judgement is expected in about 18 months.

…France wants the ECJ to rule on whether NPBTs should, in fact, be regulated according to EU GMO law… and whether countries could ban NPBTs.

Since the definition of eight NPBTs… in 2007, there has been an ongoing debate on whether the resulting plants and their products fall within the definition of GM in scientific and legal terms.

Their regulation has been under review by the European Commission (EC) since then.

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The Commission’s opinion was due by the end of 2015, but the procedure was postponed…

Opponents of NPBTs such as Greenpeace , GM Freeze, and Friends of the Earth argue the plants resulting from such techniques are GMOs legally and scientifically.

But proponents of the crop technology say otherwise:

Dr Wendy Harwood, a senior scientist …at the Norwich-based plant science facility, John Innes Centre … said the new breeding methods allow plant genome modifications indistinguishable from those introduced by conventional breeding and chemical or physical mutagenesis…

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: France asks ECJ to decide if plants from new breeding techniques are GMOs