EU Ministers consider updating GM regs after ECJ ruling on gene editing

But now Mark Buckingham, chair of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council and corporate engagement lead for the UK and Ireland at Bayer, has suggested EU Ministers are considering changing GM regulations to ensure they are ‘future-proofed’.

Speaking during Farmers Guardian’s latest Ploughing Through Brexit podcast, he said: “There was a positive European Council meeting of Agriculture Ministers from around Europe a couple of weeks ago, where they recognised the decision by the ECJ was scientifically unjustified and would mean less research and less investment here in Europe.

“They are not disagreeing with the ECJ ruling, they are saying it suggests they need to look again at the GM legislation and future-proof it, so as science and research brings up new opportunities and new ways of doing plant breeding and potentially new tools for farmers, the regulations should be flexible enough to allow those to come forward rather than blocking them in the way the current regulations have blocked GM.”

Mr Buckingham went on to say the right arguments are taking place, but it was ‘much too soon to tell’ whether this would translate into better policy.