The Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger recently published an article about the alleged strong influence of the so-called ‘genetic engineering lobby’ in Bern. The article is titled: Regulation of new genetic engineering techniques: The genetic engineering lobby helped write the new law on rösti. It claims that the representatives of the genetic engineering industry have had a significant influence on the draft of the new law. The renaming of the law is particularly emphasised: originally referred to as the Federal Law on New Genetic Engineering Techniques in Plant Breeding, it is now called the Federal Law on Plants from New Breeding Technologies. The removal of the term ‘genetic engineering’ is not a coincidence, but a deliberate strategy to create public acceptance of new breeding technologies. According to the article, this is the work of the so-called genetic engineering lobby.

What is presented here as a political manoeuvre can, however, just as easily be understood as scientifically accurate naming: the new breeding technologies are a more precise form of mutagenesis, a genetic engineering method in which chemical or radioactive irradiation is used to cause random mutations. A large proportion of our current crops can be traced back to this type of breeding – hundreds of such plant varieties are also grown in organic farming. By comparison, the new breeding techniques are precision tools. If we were to be consistent, all plants bred using mutagenesis would have to be referred to as genetically modified. However, this is not the case. It is therefore only logical to categorise the new methods accordingly, even though they are now to be regulated in a separate law.

Unethical trade

The ‘Tages-Anzeiger’ obviously sees this differently. To support its own view, it cites an extra-parliamentary federal commission. What is particularly striking is an important omission: the paper refers to the ‘Swiss Federal Commission for Non-Human Biotechnology’, which classifies the new methods as genetic engineering methods that are ‘scientifically undisputed’. However, a crucial word is missing from the article: the commission is actually called the Federal EthicsCommission on Non-Human Biotechnology (EKAH). According to its website, the maximum of 12 members of the EKAH are ‘experts in ethics from various fields (philosophy, theology, biology, medicine and law) external to the administration’.

This omission is hardly an accident. It changes the perception of the source and gives the impression that a purely scientific body is classifying the new methods as genetic engineering. In fact, however, it is an ethics committee with an interdisciplinary background whose assessments are not based solely on natural science. If the journalist had wanted to present a competent scientific voice, he could simply have quoted the ECNH's ‘sister committee’, namely the Swiss Expert Committee for Biosafety, a committee made up exclusively of scientists which recently stated: ‘Furthermore, it is important to be aware that varieties created by conventional mutagenesis methods – i.e. by chemical or radioactivity-induced mutations – would never occur in nature in this way. In addition, mutations per se are a thoroughly natural process. It is estimated that around 40 billion natural mutations occur in a 1-hectare wheat field per generation. The widespread notion of a natural, stable and unchanging genetic structure, which has only been shaken by the advent of genetic engineering techniques, is scientifically untenable.’ The position adopted by the ECNH (Swiss Ethics Committee on Non-Human Genetics) and apparently also by the Tages-Anzeiger journalist is therefore scientifically untenable. The new breeding method CRISPR/Cas – the ‘gene scissors’ – is a much smaller intervention in the genome than mutation breeding. The plants that result from it cannot be distinguished from conventionally bred varieties. And if there is no difference, the declaration requirement demanded by the same journalist in an earlier comment makes no sense.