Italy is among the countries that are most attempting to accelerate the development of new GMO / NGTs, thanks to field trials carried out by entities with interests overlapping with those of industrial agriculture and the agrochemical and seed multinationals. This map shows the locations of experimental fields already approved (purple) or still under investigation (orange), where the testing of new GMOs should take place.
What are the new GMOs, renamed NGT or TEA
The new GMOs, obtained by New Genomic Techniques (NGT), are organisms that have been genetically modified by biotechnology since the early 2000s. The seed industries and the agrochemical and pharmaceutical multinationals, together with public and private researchers, tell the lie that they would be different from the first generation GMOs. The difference would lie in the fact that with these biotechnologies, no external DNA is ‘voluntarily’ inserted into the organism manipulated in the laboratory. This would be enough, for the promoters, not only to define these technologies as ‘safe’, but also to charge them with a mission to save agriculture overwhelmed by the climate crisis. To these promises are added the evergreen ones of reducing chemistry in agriculture and curbing world hunger. Even in Italy, lobbies use a ‘neo-language’ to define these GMOs with the acronym TEA, that is, Tecniche di Evoluzione Assistita (Assisted Evolution Techniques).
According to farmers’ movements, environmental, civil society and consumer associations, the story is different. Instead of supporting a necessary radical shift towards agroecology and (true) food sovereignty, the new GMOs would have the effect of prolonging the life of agro-industrial models devastating to biodiversity, health and ecosystems. They would also increase the appropriation of seeds and other living organisms through patents. As laboratory products, old and new GMOs are in fact patentable, as opposed to the non-genetically modified life forms that develop in nature and in ecosystems inhabited by farmers.
The risk of deregulation in Europe
In spite of this, a profit-driven ideological crusade is underway in Europe to push the EU to abolish traceability, labelling and risk assessment requirements for these new GMOs, on the assumption that they are equivalent to products from nature or agriculture. Today, Directive 2001/18 imposes these constraints on those who want to sell GMOs in the EU, just as it leaves countries free to ban the cultivation of GMOs on their territory (Italy and 16 other countries exercise this right). If the new GMOs are treated differently from the others, no one will be able to avoid them when they buy their food or when they grow it, organic farming will be wiped out by GMO pollen contamination, and farmers will risk lawsuits from multinationals for misappropriation of patented varieties, even if they have entered their fields by accidentally migrating from those of their neighbours. Genetically modified food also poses health risks that will no longer be assessed if the vision of equivalence wins out.
