WE SAY NO to the LAW supporting the experimentation of the new GMOs!!!
LET’S STOP THEM! Let’s make our voices heard!
WE SAY NO to the LAW supporting the experimentation of the new GMOs!!!
DON’T TOLERATE this new attack on LIFE!
We want HEALTHY AND LIFE-GIVING FOOD!!!
LET’S PROTECT MOTHER NATURE!!!
‼️ WE SAY NO to the De Carlo and Nocco legislative proposal that will enable field testing of the new GMOs.
Let’s say yes to biodiversity, to richness and to
Italian food.
Say yes to VITA!
NO OGM, NO NGT, NO TEA
LET’S STOP THEM! Let’s make our voices heard!
WE SAY NO to the LAW supporting the experimentation of the new GMOs!!!
WE SAY NO to legislative proposals that will allow field testing of #newGMOs.
WE CANNOT TOLERATE this new attack on LIFE! We want HEALTHY AND LIFE-GIVING FOOD.
You can send the statement of the Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM to all parliamentarians. It condemns, both now and in the future, the absurd turning away from the commitments that Italy has taken throughout its history to respect the precautionary principle.
The bill by Senators DE CARLO and NOCCO, SUBMITTED TO THE CHAIR ON JANUARY 23, 2023 regards
“Measures concerning the deliberate release into the environment of organisms produced by site-directed mutagenesis and cisgenesis techniques for experimental and scientific purposes.”
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As a citizen, I choose VITA and I WANT a truly sustainable and agroecological agriculture that protects biodiversity and resources and provides healthy and high quality food, something that many small organic and biodynamic producers are already doing. I cannot tolerate this anti-ecological and anti-social political vision, based on the interests of seeds and agribusiness companies that are controlled by multinational companies that are designed to destroy Nature.
YES TO LIFE (VITA), NO OGM, NO NGT, NO TEA!
Together with more than 30 organizations that are part of the Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM, we condemn, both now and in the future, the absurd turning away from the commitments that Italy has taken throughout its history to respect the precautionary principle.
NO to bills that will allow field testing of #newGMOs
Press Release.
ROME, MARCH 15, 2023-The Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM, consisting of 32 farmer, environmental, consumer and organic associations, welcomes with concern the announcement of the approval by fall 2023 of two bills that would allow the field testing of new GMOs (NGTs), without waiting for any European provisions on this issue.
The roadmap was outlined on March 14 during the presentation of the Position Paper “New genomic techniques genome editing and cisgenesis” produced by CREA in collaboration with Assobiotec, the branch of Federchimica that brings together a hundred industries active in the field of biotechnology. The event, titled “For a Productive, Sustainable and Competitive Agriculture: The Contribution of Advanced Plant Genetics,” saw the reintroduction of all the typical topics of the rhetorical arsenal used in the last 30 years by the promoters firstly of GMOs, and now of new GMOs obtained with the so-called New Genomic Techniques (NGT), renamed TEA in Italy, and presented by the promoters as a panacea for all the environmental problems afflicting agriculture. The Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM considers a serious matter that the public institution, which should provide guidance to farmers on the basis of a reliable and extensive background of documentation, is acting as the spokesperson for industrial interests, in an obvious conflict of interest.
NGT/TEA products are defined by the promoters of the bills, which were filed by the Chairman of the 9th Standing Committee (Industry, Commerce, Tourism, Agriculture and Agri-Food Production) Senator Luca De Carlo and the Secretary of the 13th COMMISSION (AGRICULTURE) in the House Raffaele Nevi, as not comparable to GMOs and similar to varieties derived from natural mutation or traditional selection. There is more, they are also credited with the power to solve all environmental problems largely related to and caused by industrial agriculture, from the indiscriminate use of pesticides to climate change and drought.
According to the associations of the ” Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM” this rhetoric is based on scientific inaccuracies and on an anti-ecological and anti-social political vision, founded on the interests of seeds and agro-industrial companies which are controlled by multinational corporations, as well as on the ineterests of a small part of the world in the public research sector, which hopes to obtain new funding by establishing dangerous links with the private sector. In fact, these new biotechnologies will have as their first and only advantage the increase of power and control for the powerful agribusiness lobbies over agribusiness supply chains in our country. Moreover, EU Court of Justice sentences have reiterated how NGTs cannot be treated outside the perimeter of Directive 2001/18/EC, which defines GMOs and regulates them, requiring risk assessment, traceability and labeling. Meanwhile, organic research is latent and sees funding (that were already deliberated a few years ago) stuck in bureaucratic impediments. Under this legislation, sustained by the vast majority of consumers, Italy has exercised the power to ban the cultivation of GMOs on its territory and to maintain its distinction in agricultural production in the world. But now the majority in Parliament has the intention to tear up the current regulation, creating the conditions for bringing new GMOs to the tables of Italians, making it impossible for consumers to choose to avoid them if they are not properly labeled.
The majority of the arguments that parliamentarians and CREA representatives are taking to support the need to deregulate new GMOs are found in the communication guidelines released by the International Seed Federation: the “Building on Success” promotional campaign, conducted over the past five years by the seed industry, attempts to equate laboratory manipulation and spontaneous mutations that occur in nature. However, there is no mention of the importance of tracking the hundreds of off-target mutations that these biotechnologies cause.
Several scientific papers show that genome editing occurring in nature, in a different way than mutations, can in fact generate multiple DNA changes in addition to the desired mutation: off-target mutations, deletions and insertions as well as unwanted DNA rearrangements, chromothripsis (fragmentation of a chromosome or a region of it) and exogenous DNA insertions are not the exception, but it’s something ordinary with NGT. The problem, denounced by many, is that nowadays off-target effects are neither studied nor researched with scientific rigor on behalf of the so-called precision of the method and because of the rush into patenting the products or the processes for creating these new GMOs. Therefore, huge knowledge gaps remain about the real risks and threats associated with new GMOs to wild biodiversity, ecosystems and health.
We are facing a political response to the pressures of agribusiness, by accepting a science that renounces to rigor and method and skipping necessary steps to provide to industry new profit areas through patents and privatisations.
The possible introduction of the new GMOs in the Italian agribusiness sector would profoundly jeopardize the quality and resilience of the entire sector by reinforcing a model of industrial agriculture that requires external inputs that impact both human health and the environment; in addition to weakening the resilience of agriculture, standardizing products and flattening agrobiodiversity. What international commitments and, more importantly, more and more citizens around the world are calling for is, instead, a genuinely sustainable and agroecological agriculture that protects biodiversity and resources and provides healthy, high-quality food, as organic and biodynamic producers are already doing.
As a result, the Coalizione Italia Libera da OGM calls on politicians to choose the safe path for everyone: public research must be funded and carried out, but it must be transparent, and it has to work to demonstrate the risks of technological innovations before choosing to compromise the GMO-free supply chain by endorsing the open-field cultivation of NGT products.
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