Giving Genes a Chance: How Europe has finally backed science on plant breeding
And how WePlanet helped...
In a landmark plenary vote yesterday, the European Parliament finally backed a science-based EU framework for plant breeding innovation, with a clear majority in support of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs).
After years of debate, Europe now has a workable and proportionate set of rules that treats the most modern breeding methods according to what the science actually says about them rather than the irrational fears of conservative lobbyists and anti-tech activists.
We at WePlanet welcome this outcome. It is a big step towards giving farmers a toolbox for more sustainable and resilient agri-food systems and towards backing the scientists and innovators who develop these techniques.
This is also a moment to look back at our efforts and those of the wider pro-science movement. We have campaigned for this for years, together with our partners and with a large part of the scientific community. The vote did not happen on its own - it took a lot of organising and mobilising to pull off.
Why this matters for sustainability
The case for New Genomic Techniques rests on evidence. Scientific bodies across Europe have reached the same conclusion numerous times: NGTs can make agriculture more sustainable while keeping yields stable, a combination that is rare in farming policy.
Start with land. If a given area produces more food, less land is needed to feed the same number of people. Land that is not under the plough can return to forest, wetland or meadow, restoring ecological systems. In a period of accelerating biodiversity loss, sparing land for nature is one of the most direct contributions agriculture can make.
Then there are pesticides. Most pesticide use is to protect crops from fungal disease, viruses and insect pests – without these chemical sprays, yields would be lower, more land would be ploughed up and food prices higher. NGTs allow breeders to develop crop varieties with built-in resistance to fungal diseases and insect pests.
For example, a potato that resists late blight, or a wheat that shrugs off a fungal infection helps keep yields high with less chemical inputs. Fewer sprays mean lower costs for the farmer, less exposure for farm workers, and less pressure on the surrounding ecosystem.
The public database EU-SAGE shows that resistance to pests and pathogens is one of the most studied applications of these techniques, well ahead of the herbicide tolerance trait that GMO critics so often place at the centre of the debate.
Fertiliser is a similar story. Plants that use nitrogen more efficiently, or that tolerate drought and heat, need fewer inputs to deliver the same result. Less synthetic fertiliser means lower greenhouse gas emissions from its manufacture and less nitrogen running off into rivers and groundwater.
The nitrogen problem is one of the most stubborn in European agriculture, and better varieties are part of the answer. Going organic also works, but yields are typically much lower, so all other things being equal more land needs to be brought into production for the same amount of food. NGTs help avoid that trade-off: less chemicals AND land-sparing for rewilding.
What makes NGT category 1 different
It helps to be precise about what these techniques are, because the public and media debate has often blurred the lines.
Conventional breeding works by crossing plants and selecting the offspring with the best traits. It is reliable but imprecise. Every cross reshuffles thousands of genes at once, and the breeder has little control over what comes along for the ride. And it takes years: you have to wait for each new generation to see what chance genetic recombinations will bring.
Classical mutation breeding, which has produced many of the varieties on supermarket shelves today, goes further still. It uses radiation or chemicals to scatter random mutations across the genome and then sifts through the results. These methods are accepted, unlabelled and uncontroversial (and are even considered organic), yet they are far blunter than anything an NGT does.
New Genomic Techniques are the opposite of blunt. They make small, targeted changes at a known location in the plant’s own DNA. The kind of change involved is the same kind that could arise through conventional breeding or through natural mutation. The difference is control. The breeder knows what was changed and where.
Because the edit is precise and limited, the risk of unintended traits is lower than in conventional or mutation breeding, where unknown changes ride along by chance. The European Food Safety Authority has stated repeatedly that NGTs pose no additional risk compared with conventionally bred varieties.
Precision also brings speed. Developing a new variety through conventional crossing can take a decade or more. Targeted editing shortens that timeline considerably. Speed is not a luxury here. The climate is changing faster than traditional breeding can keep pace with, and farmers need varieties that can handle the droughts, heat waves and new pests already arriving in their fields. Faster breeding is one of the few levers we have to keep the food system stable as conditions shift.
So, the comparison is straightforward. NGT are less invasive than classical GMOs, which move genes between unrelated species. They are more targeted and more predictable than conventional breeding and only lead to changes indistinguishable from what could also occur in conventional breeding or even naturally.
From research strength to real-world returns
Europe has never lacked scientific expertise in this field. European laboratories helped develop the foundational tools of genome editing. The problem was the gap between that science and its use, which was blocked by policymakers and activists.
Until now, the benefits of European research could only be used abroad, and therefore translated into returns for sustainability, society and the economy in countries that updated their rules to reflect new science and promote innovation. European farmers watched from the sidelines while the technology their own scientists helped build delivered results elsewhere.
That can now change. With a workable framework in place, the knowledge generated in European institutions has a path to European fields. The advantage we hold in research can finally become an advantage in sustainability and food security at home.
How WePlanet helped deliver
We did not arrive here by accident. Through our Give Genes a Chance campaign, WePlanet and our partner networks worked for years to put science at the centre of this debate.
Much of the groundwork in Germany was carried out by our German chapter, the Eco-Progressive Network. Since 2019, it has presented a science-based argument for new breeding techniques to the public, the media, and policymakers through its blog, Progressive Agrarwende. Since 2020, it has done so as a registered NGO.
The ‘EcoProgs’ remain the only environmental NGO in German civil society to hold a pro-NGT position. Their activities include taking part in numerous panel discussions, running webinar series and writing open letters to policymakers. One webinar series was held in collaboration with the German Association for Synthetic Biology.
The network has also met with members of the Bundestag and argued for a pro-NGT stance within the Green Party, where the debate has been the most difficult to influence. Over the last few years, pro-NGT media coverage in national outlets and on TV has regularly included members of EcoProg. The CRISPR Library is a catalogue of real gene-edited crops and the traits behind them, which makes the abstract debate concrete.
A few of the wider WePlanet milestones along the way:
2024. In the run-up to the Parliament’s first decisions, we put the scientific community front and centre. We coordinated an open letter in which 37 Nobel laureates and more than 1,500 researchers urged MEPs to reject anti-science fearmongering and back a science-based regulation of New Genomic Techniques.
Through Give Genes a Chance, we motivated scientists across Europe to speak up in public, with photos, videos and demonstrations. Researchers from dozens of universities held banners reading ‘Give Genes a Chance’, and more than a thousand scientists in fourteen countries took to the streets in a coordinated show of support.
On 24 January 2024 the Parliament’s environment committee backed the proposal by 47 votes to 31, and on 7 February the full Parliament adopted its position. The campaign was reported across the German-speaking and European press, including Der Standard in Austria, the Tagesspiegel, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Bild and Merkur in Germany, and De Morgen in Belgium.
2025. We continued to make our case in the national media, including an interview with EW, the largest news magazine in the Netherlands, in which our senior policy advisor on agriculture, Hidde Boersma, explained the campaign and its impact on ensuring that science-based plant breeding supports a healthy and sustainable food system.
In September we published our NGT Essentials, a single resource bringing together everything from the scientific basics to labelling, biodiversity, patents and public acceptance, so that anyone following the debate could find the evidence in one place. In a white paper on patents, we set out how intellectual property rules should be handled so that the technology stays open to breeders and farmers.
December 2025. As the Parliament and Council reached their provisional agreement, the story reached the wider public. Outlets across Europe explained to readers what easier rules would mean for plant breeding and for shoppers. The technical file had become a mainstream story. In a statement on the trilogue agreement, our German chapter welcomed the agreement.
2026. In the final stretch, we ramped up our presence on social media to counter the anti-NGT position of the legacy green movement. We mobilised our networks once again for a final fight for science and sustainable agriculture.
17 June 2026. The Parliament’s vote. The framework is now set to be published and to apply across the EU after a transition period, with most provisions expected to take effect from 2028.
What comes next
A vote is not the end of the work. The regulation must be implemented well, the patenting questions need fair and transparent answers, and farmers need real access to the varieties this framework makes possible. We will stay engaged on all of it.
There is a real risk ahead. The people who lost the argument on the science can still try to win on the procedure, using blocking tactics and delays. They will try to load the approval process with so much bureaucratic burden that in the end no one in the EU bothers to use it, and all the energy spent on the regulatory compromise is wasted. We will work hard to stop that from happening. And we need you all to support that mission.
Now that plant-breeding innovation is possible, we hope it will be taken up quickly, and we will keep you posted on how the science makes its way onto fields and on the improvements it delivers. New genomic techniques can finally happen. We can look back and say that the long stretch of fearmongering about the unknown is finally over.
For today, therefore, it is worth marking the moment. Europe chose to regulate a technology according to the evidence rather than the noise around it. That is what we set out to achieve, and it is what good policy should look like.
The vote was the hard-won start, not the finish, and we will keep at it until the benefits show up in real harvests in Europe.
Thank you for doing the work correcting one of the irrationality points in my test: https://youtu.be/3pXPjo0n7UU?is=ItrQwR1QRunPeR1Y
You do know that genetically modified crops can have it's dangers too. Not only that but the government usually control the GM companies in some way or form, which means they control the seed, this controls what crops can be grown and who can grow these crops and the amount of crops that can be grown.
There was a case in the US, where it was found that a farmer growing their crops ended up having some of the GM crops growing in his fields, through no fault of his own and the GM company sued him for it. You just can't make this stuff up.
If there wasn't so much of freedom of travel, we wouldn't be in this position, nor would we be in this position if the government and the EU had treated our farmers the way the EU treated other countries! Same with the fishing stocks, German received more rebate for sustainable fishing than we did, .we had a massive fish stock until greedy companies came along and stripped our fishing stocks. The price of cod keeps going up because other countries fish it to almost non existence.
Farmers need to be supported properly, if anyone remembers the foot and mouth, that occurred during a labour government and they KNEW it was coming and they did nothing! How many lamb farmers lost their income because of their lack of support.
Now this labour government is further causing damage to our farming and what's going to happen, most of the fruit and veg already comes from other countries where we used to have our own, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes etc etc Imports put up the price, causing us to have less money and spending power. If they do not put up the price they are usually pretty disgusting to eat.
Then, there is the issue with how meat is slaughtered in this country, never used to be a problem. Roughly 17% of the population eats halal meat because of religious purposes but 100% of the country were buying halal without their knowledge. How is it that a minority of the country can dictate what everyone else is subjected to.
The independent have written an article about how Brexit has screwed us all up. What they seem to ignore in their title, Sunak signed a new agreement with the EU and THAT's why UK is now screwed up. Everyone seems to ignore that he also signed a new ECHR agreement before he left office.
If we had just pulled out, ripped up all the agreements going back to the end of the EEC, renegotiated our position afterwards and it was an agreement made by British people who wouldn't take any rubbish. Last person to do that Margaret Thatcher and since then all we have had is YES people to the EU, not fighting for us but fighting for them.
There are so many things that need to be fought for, massive reductions in our domestic fuel prices would be a good start! Stop with all the red tape, a lot of it is nonsense and reversed at some point. Ban on US bleached chicken (its not healthy for you), in fact most of the US meat market is full of steroids and anti biotics (this is why scientists have been worried the anti biotics are passed on to the consumer making them slowly resistant to the treatment).
Labour government recently gave in to the US trade department AKA big pharma....the NHS has to pay more for medicines that come from the US, this will increase prescription charges again. Some medications may be too expensive for the NHS to justify, meaning people could possibly go without important medications. They have been lobbying our parliament for almost 20 years and that wet Starmer caved.
The Net zero is costing us, the general public far too much money to continue this pipe dream. C40 cities aka 15 minute cities, WEF ideology and anyone else that isn't from the UK is trying to run the UK and our successive governments have done nothing to stop this.