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Last month, French winegrower André Baniol wrote an open letter to the French Institute of Vine and Wine (IFV) and to the French Ministry of Agriculture to make a plea for relaxing restrictions on the use of genetically modified crops.
As first covered in French wine industry publication Vitisphere, Baniol made a case for gene editing as a way to get rid of harmful pesticides without changing the grape varieties.
“They would simply receive genes for resistance to cryptogamic diseases, without losing either their organoleptic characteristics or their surname, the unavoidable access key to the market,’ wrote Baniol.
Secretary General of the Assembly of European Wine Regions, Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, agrees. From Vitisphere:
According to Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, the 50% reduction by 2030 in the use of phytosanitary products requested by Europe within the framework of the Green Deal is impossible without recourse to genetics. “Other countries like the United States and Israel are already using it to release new varieties, so we shouldn’t miss the boat”. Problem, in Europe, NTGs have been subject to the same regulations as GMOs since 2021. The latter prohibits the “deliberate release” and “placing on the market of GMOs” without specific assessment of the risks to human health and the environment.
As Clermont-Tonnerre writes, the US and other countries have taken a much more laissez-faire approach to the use of gene-editing compared to the EU, essentially allowing them if any changes made using the technique could have happened through traditional plant-breeding methods. The UK, post-Brexit, has taken a similar stance towards gene-editing, and just last month, China amended its rules to allow for a fast-tracking of gene-edited crops.
Long-term, the use of gene-editing holds great potential as a way to create plants that are more resistant to disease, pests and changes brought on by climate change. It also enables the creation of new crops, such as mustard greens without a bitter taste or pungent smell.
In general, the EU has been slow to take up the subject, but as pressure from different agriculture interest groups grows and politicians in countries like Switzerland begin to push for more relaxed regulation over the technology, one has to wonder if the European governing body will begin to take notice.
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