Dr. Barry O'Reilly:

For clarification, all plants produced from new genomic techniques, NGTs, which are mutagenesis and cisgenesis, use these technologies that have been developed over the past two decades. The European Court of Justice gave a ruling that any plants produced from these technologies fall under the scope of current GMO legislation. The Commission carried out a study in regards to the status of NGTs under Union law. It concluded that current GMO legislation is not fit for purpose when it comes to NGTs and that it needs to be adapted to take account of scientific and technological progress over the past two decades.

That formed the basis for the Commission bringing forward this proposal, which was adopted last in July last year. The main provisions of the proposal essentially put forward two procedures. One relates to a notification procedure for verification of plants produced by new genomic techniques to verify whether they can be produced conventionally. NGTs can result in plants that can happen by conventional breeding or in nature. There is a large degree of complexity in terms of plants that can be produced by NGTs. Some of them are very simple; others are far more complex.

The first provision is a verification procedure whereby applicants who breed plants by NGTs submit a verification request and a decision is made. It depends on what the intended use is; if it is for field trials it is made at a national level, while if it is for placing on the market it is made at a centralised level to the European Food Safety Authority. A decision is made on whether the plants fall into category 1, which would be deemed equivalent to conventional plants. That decision is made on the basis of meeting certain criteria that are laid out in the annex of the proposal. Those criteria essentially relate to the number and type of modifications that are carried out to the genome of the plant. If there are fewer than 20 modifications of a certain type, it is deemed a conventional plant and it falls outside the scope of the GMO legislation.