New Breeding Techniques in Organic Agriculture : The Limits of Biotechnology for Organic Plant Breeding

Summary

New Breeding Techniques are able to create organisms that do not (completely) contain external genetic material and are especially interesting since they enable DNA mutations faster and more precise than ever before. With the development of the New Breeding Techniques the debate about its legislation started, since these techniques might be excluded from GMO-legislation. In 2018, the European Court of Justice decided that these New Breeding Techniques do require the GMO-legislation according to Directive 2001/18/EC. Organic Agriculture refuses gene technology and therefore it bans these New Breeding Techniques. Hence, even if the New Breeding Techniques were legislated as exemption from the GMO-Directive, they would not be allowed in organic agriculture. Organic consumers, however, seem to have a slightly different understanding of ‘organic’ than identified in the Principles of Organic Agriculture. The question then is for whom ‘organic’ actually is organic and why, what the limits of biotechnology in organic agriculture are, and how this can be explained by linking different perspectives to nature.