French court says mutagenesis products must be regulated just like GMOs

Mutagenesis is a process where new strains of food and products are created using chemicals and radiation in the lab. It is much faster than the natural mutation process while being more targeted than old techniques like hybrids and grafts. In the 1970s, its successor, transgene science and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), began to be studied and by the early 1980s products began to appear. In the 1990s, the American state of Hawaiʻi approved a papaya that had been devastated by a natural virus after breeding techniques and chemicals failed to stop it. Other foods followed.

When European non-government organizations in the food sector turned on the American GMO process, it was simple enough to exempt mutagenesis by creating a rationalization that transgenesis inserts a gene from another species into the genome of an organism while mutagenesis causes internal mutations in the organism. That worked fine until even more precision came into being and NGOs started to use the term GMO for all genetic engineering.

Then it was only a matter of time before courts took notice. They have. In France, the Council of State judges have decreed that mutagenesis must be subject to the same regulations applied to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) if their plant varieties were made more tolerant to herbicides. Like GMOs were made tolerant to glyphosate. On 12 March 2001, a European directive stated that GMOs are subject to risk assessment and authorization procedures prior to being sold or used in the marketplace and the EU directive was transposed into French law in the environment code 2 , but it only applied to transgenic products, which allowed them to exclude all organisms obtained by mutagenesis from broad GMO regulations.

The court declared this made no scientific sense and put mutagenesis in the same category of genetic modification if it used herbicide resistance. So thousands of decorative flowers on the market are still exempt.

Invoking the Precautionary Principle that applies to all other genetic engineering, the Council of State gave the Government six months to amend article D. 531-2 of the environment code and then within nine months government will have to identify the varieties of agricultural plants obtained by mutagenesis which have been entered in the official catalog of cultivated plants without having been subject to the risk assessment procedure applicable to GMOs.

Common foods created using mutagenesis are rice, peas, peanuts, grapefruit, bananas, cassava and sorghum. Mutagenesis wheat is used for bread and pasta and mutated barley is in beer and whiskey. That means no more “bio” beer, bread or pasta.

Most of these mutagenesis foods will not be able to survive an approval process designed to keep its competitors from the marketplace so it is likely farmers will withdraw the varieties concerned from the catalog and suspend their cultivation.