Government: Hungary remains GMO-free – UPDATE

The Hungarian government is not planning to change its strategy of keeping the country’s agriculture free of GMOs, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday, noting that the European Union had started negotiations on the regulation of new genetic technologies (NGT).

According to a draft published by the European Commission last week, produce created using NGT would fall into two categories, the first of which would no longer be governed by current GMO regulations, the ministry said, adding that in the absence of any prior risk assessment, labelling or monitoring, organisms may enter the environment. As for the second category, licensing procedures would be made much easier, “with far less data and impact analyses than that which apply to existing GMO“. Moreover, in the case of some organisms, “follow up would be absent and any harmful effects would never be assessed.”

Under the proposal, member states would not have the right to decide if they want to allow the farming of such produce on their territory, the ministry said. “This is an especially sensitive issue for Hungary, because the EU’s GMO directive was modified in 2015 … so as to make it possible for member states to decide if they want to grow GMO or not…” “The current proposal would strip members of that achievement,” the statement said.

GMO is risky

The statement said that the government supports the research into new gene technologies such as genetic editing in research institutes or universities as those activities would contribute to developments and greater competitiveness. Using such technologies in closed systems eliminate environmental and health risks, it said, while such farming technologies would entail risks that “must be assessed before such a product is marketed”.

“Once there is a harmful effect … it is too late to act because those organisms cannot be withdrawn from the environment,” the ministry said, adding that “regulation of activities concerning such organisms is indispensable”. Hungary advocates prudence and will not support any initiative through which such products could be distributed without prior health and environmental risk assessment in the EU, the statement said.

Ensuring the food supply and food security, as well as protection to traditional and ecological farming, are high priorities, the statement said, adding that the final decree should stipulate that NGT products are adequately marked, monitored, and could be excluded from ecological farming. Mandatory product marking would also ensure the consumer’s right to make a free choice, the ministry said.

UPDATE

Hungary’s opposition to new genomic techniques does farmers and consumers a disservice

By Bill Wirtz

The European Commission recently announced new legislation that will structurally grant authorisation for cultivating gene-edited plants in the EU. Until this day, so-called NGTs (new genomic techniques), despite having been discovered by a prominent European scientist, could not be used on European farmers because of outdated legislation dating back to 2001. However, an alliance of Green parties in the European Parliament, as well as both Hungary and Austria, are set to oppose this authorisation.

In a communiqué dating back to July, the Hungarian government clarified its intentions: “The GMO-free domestic strategy will therefore not change. Negotiations at the European Union level have begun, where our country continues to stand up for what is defined in the Basic Law, i.e. the GMO-free Hungarian agriculture.” The wording of the entire statement is ill-advised, not merely because it was released just a little over a week after the Commission announcement. It is hardly giving the government in Budapest enough time to consider the scientific literature associated with the issue. More importantly, the government is advertently correct when it says that Hungary will remain GMO-free, because NGTs are not GMOs.

What is commonly referred to as GMOs (the term is not really a scientific one because it is too broad to be correctly defined) are transgenic crops, meaning the transfer of a small amount of genetic material from across other species to improve the characteristics of a crop. An example of a “GMO” is BT maize – by introducing a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, this maize variety manages to fend off insects that are likely to destroy the crops, such as the European corn borer. Spain and Portugal have successfully cultivated BT maize for the past 20 years, and none of the horror scenarios painted before its introduction has come true.

These two countries remain the only ones in the EU that cultivate these crops, which by now is now technologically aged and, in many cases, only produced for these two markets since countries such as the United States have moved on to much more advanced seeds. That said, this new legislation will not even cover transgenic crops. Only targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis will be allowed under the incoming Commission rules.

Gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 are considerably more precise than previously available technologies, making them safer and more reliable. They’re already successfully used in the United States and Canada, the latter with which the European Union has a free trade agreement already. Both the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) have done extensive research on the subject, culminating in a Commission study published two years ago that laid out in detail why the existing rules on genetic engineering are simply outdated. This is simply observable by the mere fact that at the time of the previous rules on “GMOs” in 2001, gene-editing technology hadn’t even been discovered yet.

Note also that the Commission proposal will only allow those crops that could also naturally occur by conventional breeding. Essentially, we are not reinventing the wheel here; we are only spinning it faster and more efficiently.

The argument for this legislative change isn’t merely that Europe is lagging behind, even though that is a good starting point. Gene-editing has immense benefits for consumers and producers alike. Gene-edited crops reduce the need for resource inputs such as pesticides, fertilisers, or water, all while increasing yield. This means that farmers get more stable and reliable yields and that consumers get access to more affordable products. Geopolitically, this means that Europe will be less dependent on the import of fertiliser nutrients from one of its biggest exporters: Russia. With reduced resource input, gene-editing also has immense environmental benefits: increased yields means producing more food while polluting less and requiring less agricultural surface, giving way to rewilding of nature.

Even on a health basis, gene-editing proposes innovative solutions. Be it wheat that doesn’t contain gluten or nuts that do not cause allergies. As food allergies are on the rise, modern technologies provide a solution for a safer and more reliable food supply.

Why does the Hungarian government oppose gene-editing? Arguably, the government plays into the instinctive reactions of a subsection of society that is generally technophobic. Any new scientific innovation is viewed with suspicion, especially if those who worked on its development wore lab coats while doing it. It should be noted to all consumers that all gene-edited varieties will undergo rigorous testing and that even if this legislation passes, we won’t see any food items derived through NGTs in our grocery stores within the coming ten years.

What the European Commission proposes is the recognition of scientific innovation that is neither new nor untested. When Viktor Orban visited the White House in 2019 – unless he brought his own lunch box from Budapest, chances are he ate food that was produced in a way he objects to in Europe. It is time Hungary drops its opposition to the new legislation or puts forward scientific evidence that contradicts the long-standing scientific consensus on genetic engineering.

Bill Wirtz is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, where he covers agriculture and trade policy. He published “It’s in our Genes: Seizing the Opportunities of Genetic Engineering in Agriculture“