by Eva Sirinathsinghji (Third World Network)
Emerging LMO applications pose potentially irreversible risks, while fundamentally challenging risk assessment experiences and protocols. Meanwhile, first generation LMOs are exposing their forewarned threats to traditional agriculture, and raise long-term/cumulative risks that urgently warrant increased protections.
The Living Modified organism (LMO) industry continues to evolve in its efforts to broaden potential species range, trait type, and technology being targeted. Stalling first generation LM crop trait innovations, advances in genome editing techniques, and an appa-rent increase in interest towards high-risk applications such as self-spreading applications, or the release of genome editors to engineer organisms post-release.
The conclusions of the recent AHTEG to forward multiple recommendations for additional guidance reflects these novel developments, including for LM microorganisms, LM algae, LM fish and LM organisms expressing genome editing machinery for pest or pathogen control.
These topics present numerous cross-cutting biosafety considerations that challenge existing risk assessment frameworks and should be supported by Parties such as risks of high spread, persistence, reproductive and evo-lutionary capacities, lack of controllability and reversi-bility, and fundamental knowledge gaps regarding underlying biology, ecology, evolutionary capacity, receiving environments and ecosystem interactions. This also challenges risk assessment experiences to date, which have focussed on limited numbers of LM crop traits and species.
The lack of control over their spread and persistence also raises key concerns regarding the ability to ensure against transboundary movement and to gaining full, prior and informed consent from potentially affected communities.
Meanwhile, first generation GM products are still overwhelmingly dominated by two traits of herbicide tolerance and insect resistance despite well-established harms to biodiversity, human health, socio-economic status and sovereignty of impacted communities. Evidence of adverse impacts to crops at the centre of origin are accumulating, posing a direct threat to food sovereignty, crop genetic diversity, traditional and indigenous agricultural practices and to wider biodiversity as a whole. Long-term and cumulative impacts also become increasingly prescient as more stacked traits and combinations of LM foods enter the food supply.
As such, the recommendation to develop technical notes to support specific risk assessment considerations on (1) Long-term and cumulative effects of genetic constructs and LMOs; and (2) Use of LMOs in centres of origin and in traditional agricultural systems. These are long overdue and should be supported as a matter of priority.
However, the devil is in the detail. Industry attempts to narrow and weaken assessments must be resisted.
As concluded by the AHTEG, any new guidance must be anchored in a precautionary approach, with a foundational basis in Annex III of the Protocol, to ensure that all potential unintended effects are indeed assessed in a precautionary manner. Anti-precautionary approaches needed to be rejected.
The Cartagena Protocol must never be degraded into a rubber-stamping exercise!