In Italy, senators under the orders of the Coldiretti and Big Ag lobbies turn the ‘drought decree’ into a Trojan horse to hide in it an amendment that has nothing to do with the water crisis and instead introduce open field testing of new GMOs.
The GMO-Free Italy Coalition calls for the withdrawal of the amendment and announces legal battle in the European Union to force the Italian Parliament to respect common rules, starting with the precautionary principle.
The ‘drought decree,’ new Trojan horse to liberalize new GMOs in Italy
The Agriculture and Environment Committees of the Senate of the Italian Republic on May 30, 2023, unanimously approved an amendment to the ‘drought decree’ aimed at liberalizing the open-field testing of new GMOs without any regard to risks to human health, biodiversity and ecosystems.
The mocking acronym TEA- ‘Assisted Evolution Techniques’ (from genetic engineering, whose protagonists aspire to deregulation on a global scale)-underlies plant varieties known as NGT(New Genomic Techniques), which the EU Court of Justice in 2018 equated for all intents and purposes with genetically modified organisms.
The empty promises of pursuing food sovereignty
Civil society-through the GMO-Free Italy Coalition-emphasizes how this amendment moves in the opposite direction to the food sovereignty that this very government claims to want to promote, with unfortunately little knowledge as we have seen.
In fact, the biotechnologies in question, under the guise of ‘adapting’ agrifood systems to the climate emergency, exacerbate it by re-proposing a model of industrial agriculture based on the abuse of pesticides and herbicides that only GMOs – old and new – are designed to resist, according to Monsanto school.
Italian farmers who persist in following this ‘model,’ after all-beyond the fairy tales about higher yields-have not seen any positive change on the prices of their products, except to face the increasing costs of input in agriculture (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and the nitrogen fertilizers needed to compensate for soil sterility caused by agrochemicals).
A bolt from the blue in an Italy that has always been non-GMO
‘The unanimous vote of the Italian Parliament highlights the following. a self-defeating ‘single-minded thinking’ of our policy makers about what the ecological transition of agri-food systems should be, forgetting the potential and opportunities offered by agroecology, which has the ‘flaw’ of not guaranteeing the concentration of profits in the hands of a few parties and offering farmers effective economic solutions‘, the associations explain.
‘With this vote, Italy is taking a step toward abandoning its 20-year line strictly against GMOs, opening up to field trials that are a prerequisite for bringing genetically modified food to Italian tables.’ As well as to disperse the extraordinary biodiversity that has always characterized agriculture and agrifood production in Italy, the basis of the world-acclaimed Made in Italy .
Violations of European law
The amendment passed in the Senate is a clear violation of European law, which regulates with uniform rules the scientific risk assessment as a prerequisite for EU authorizations for the deliberate release of GMOs (old and new) into the environment and their use in food and feed production. Member states therefore have no room for maneuver, outside of the option-already expressed by Italy, Austria and several other countries-to ban GMO crops on their territories.
The proposed deregulation Of the new GMOs announced in Brussels Will not produce any legal effect, on the other hand, until the relevant text is eventually adopted by co-decision procedure-that is, by agreement of the European Parliament, Council and Commission-and enters into force following publication in the Official Journal. And this is unlikely to happen any time soon, between terms, with the spirited opposition of Europeans.
The appeal of the GMO-Free Italy Coalition.
The prospect of soon having ‘Made in Italy‘ GMO food is out of the question, as it is contrary to EU law. But the voting expressions of representatives of an electorate that is less and less inclined to go to the polls increase citizens’ distrust of politics. The GMO-Free Italy Coalition therefore calls on Italian politicians to assume responsibility toward the territories and populations that have always expressed and express opposition to the genetic mutation of the agri-food heritage.
The appeal is addressed to all parliamentarians, but also to the presidents of the Autonomous Regions and Provinces. On this issue, which concerns agri-food systems, food safety and the environment, the aforementioned local authorities have concurrent jurisdiction with the state, thanks to the 2001 constitutional reform. And it is good for everyone to put their feet back into the earth where they rest their chairs, with due respect for the earth itself.
On behalf of the GMO-Free Italy Coalition:
Acu, Agora, Aiab, AltragricolturaBio, Ari, Asci, AssoBio, Association for Biodynamic Agriculture, Crossroads International Center, Civiltà Contadina, Coltivare Condividendo, Zero GMO Coordination, Cub, Deafal, European Consumers, Egalité, Equivita, FairWatch, Federbio, Firab, Seminare il Futuro Foundation, Greenpeace, Isde, Legambiente, Lipu, Pro Natura, Ries – Italian Solidarity Economy Network, Ress, Terra! TerraNuova Onlus, Transform! Italy, Navdanya International, Seed Vicious, Slow Food, Usb, Vas, WWF.
Dario Dongo and Marta Strinati
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
