New mutagenesis techniques, selection techniques intended to obtain genetic mutations from a living organism, must be subject to GMO regulations, the Council of State estimated on Friday, complying with a judgment of the European Court of Justice . " The most recent mutagenesis techniques must be subject to GMO regulations ," said in a statement the Council of State, which gives the government six months to modify the environmental code which transposes the European directive of March 12, 2001 on genetically modified organisms.
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At the center of this decision, NBTs or " New breeding techniques ", new tools which make it possible to modify the genome of plants without inserting a foreign gene, therefore much faster and more precisely than the techniques used to produce the first GMOs. . These tools are essential to maintain the competitiveness of the seed sector, according to the latter, while their detractors, at the forefront of which the Peasant Confederation, denounce " new GMOs ".
In March 2015, with eight other associations (Farmer Seed Network, Friends of the Earth, etc.), the agricultural union had seized the Council of State. He challenged the legality of an article of the Environment Code excluding organisms obtained by mutagenesis from the scope of regulations on GMOs. Mutagenesis techniques involve modifying a plant's own genes, unlike transgenesis, which introduces an external gene and produces transgenic organisms, which are then subject to special regulations.
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