EurActiv
Europe’s young farmers want to use latest sustainability tools—including gene editing
Young farmers’ organization, the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), took a generally positive but cautious view on the Commission’s ...
Support for crop gene editing in UK, Europe grows as legislators aim to expand sustainable farming
Asked about the potential for biotech and gene editing in the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F), the EU’s new flagship ...
Green Party defends Europe’s simultaneous ban on gene-edited crops and use of biotech in medicine
[Editor's note: In June a faction of Germany's Green Party argued it was time the EU revised its strict regulation ...
Anti-biotech groups call for EU-wide ban on disease-fighting gene drives, defying scientists’ recommendations
[Editor's note: More than 78 European environmental and agricultural organizations have signed a letter calling for a moratorium on gene ...
Farm to Fork tempest: EU defends plan to make 25 percent of agriculture organic, ignoring farmer skepticism
[Editor's note: EU farmers are skeptical of a new government initiative to make 25 percent of Europe's farmland organic by ...
UK environment secretary backs relaxed CRISPR crop rules, but says GMO restrictions won’t change
Addressing MPs via video call, [UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice] said that “gene ...
Before restricting Roundup weedkiller, EU lawmakers want to know how it could affect farmers
Any potential reduction of glyphosate in the EU should be preceded by an impact assessment exploring the consequence for farmers, ...
Viewpoint: Greenpeace lobbies to ban fungicides that kill cancer-causing mycotoxins
A vast network of organizations, including known players such as Greenpeace, are throwing a myriad of unscientific publications at the ...
EU Food Safety Authority defends pesticide risk studies activists call ‘unfit for purpose’
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published the results of its two pilot assessments on the risks posed to ...
Viewpoint: Modern ‘post-truth’ politics ignores sustainability benefits of GMOs and pesticides
As Africa shows, locust plagues can be devastating for food security, and climate science enables us to detect that certain ...
Greenpeace proposes law to cut EU meat consumption 80% by 2050, to just three burgers per week
The world’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, recommends that in 2050, people should be consuming a maximum of 300 grams ...
Biofortification from Golden Rice and other biotech crops could help cut $3.5 trillion lost annually to malnutrition
Over two billion people worldwide continue to suffer from hidden hunger, or the lack of essential micronutrients, which impairs the ...
Transgenic GMOs will remain banned in Italy, agriculture minister says, but cisgenic gene editing could help sustain nation’s crop diversity
Italy’s agricultural minister Teresa Bellanova has expressed an interest in developing sustainable biotechnology, in the light of a milestone agreement ...
‘Maladapted’ EU regulation hinders non-toxic biopesticide development, despite growing farmer demand
Biological pesticides are rapidly gaining attention as a sustainable and viable environmentally friendly alternative to chemical pesticides. However, they are ...
EU officials open to ‘science-based’ decision making on CRISPR crops, USDA’s Sonny Perdue says
When it comes to food, EU policymakers should make science-based decisions if they want to help European their farmers tackle ...
France’s new pesticide-free zones threaten country’s vineyards, winegrowers say
The idea of so-called pesticide-free zones (or non-treatment zones) has gradually emerged as a solution to protect against the harmful ...
European ‘Green Deal’ stripped of proposal to develop ‘innovative strategies,’ including gene editing
The Green Deal submitted [Dec. 11] left out two controversial passages to agriculture. The debate on genetic engineering and pesticide ...
Farm to Fork strategy: New EU Agriculture Commissioner wants to boost organic farming
The EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, highlighted the promotion of organic farming as a key aim for the new ...
French seed firm strikes gene editing licensing deal, despite CRISPR’s uncertain future in EU
Despite the ongoing legal uncertainty over the future of new plant breeding innovation in Europe, US agricultural company Corteva Agriscience ...
EU CRISPR-edited crop rules still unclear, a year after landmark court ruling
After the controversial European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling in 2018 that organisms obtained by new plant breeding techniques (NBTs) ...
EU Health Commissioner: Let’s talk about GMOs, CRISPR, because 100-year-old farming methods aren’t sustainable
“We cannot achieve sustainability with the exact same production models that we used 100 years ago when all the other ...
Viewpoint: New EU Parliament should stop ‘shunning science’ and embrace GMOs
The recently elected European Parliament (EP) should bring with it a ray of hope. Hope that Europe will rise to ...
Bayer: No glyphosate alternative will ‘magically’ appear in next 5 years
In the next five years, no alternative to glyphosate is going to “magically” appear in the market, Dr Bob Reiter, ...
Debate over GMO, CRISPR crop rules ‘essential’ as EU agriculture adapts to changing climate
In the hot summer of 2018, German farmers received €340 million in drought aid, and it will certainly not be ...
Plant breeders will move CRISPR gene-editing programs out of EU without updated regulations, industry group says
A number of breeding companies have promised to relocate their advanced mutagenesis breeding programs outside Europe and others will follow ...
14 EU nations call for ‘unified’ CRISPR crop regulation to boost sustainable farming
The Netherlands and Estonia are leading a coalition of 14 EU member states calling on the next European Commission to ...
EU Commission prepares for possible ‘overhaul’ of GMO crop rules to address CRISPR gene editing
The EU executive has already prepared the ground for a new initiative on gene editing to overhaul the current GMO ...
Viewpoint: Biotech industry should rebuild EU’s trust in science to foster farming innovation
The global environmental challenges are changing too fast and we therefore need speedy reactions too, including innovative plant breeding technologies ...