No scientific basis for a special law

Even 'new' genetic engineering is still genetic engineering; the term 'new breeding technologies' is misleading, as is the justification for a special law.

With the proposed 'Federal Act on Plants from New Breeding Technologies' (the Breeding Technology Act, or NZTG for short), the Federal Council is accommodating the genetic engineering lobby's wish to avoid regulating organisms modified by targeted genetic engineering techniques (such as CRISPR-Cas9) under the existing Genetic Engineering Act (GTG). However, this would be problematic both legally and scientifically.

Here's a summary of our arguments:

• As the Federal Council itself stated, the technologies of concern are genetic engineering processes, and the resulting organisms are genetically modified organisms (GMOs), from both a technical and legal perspective. This is in line with the assessment of the European Court of Justice, which in a judgment of 25 July 2018 in Case C-528/1627. Since there is already a law governing GMOs in the form of the Genetic Engineering Act (GTG), the present proposal constitutes a duplication of legislation.
• The designation of the proposed legislation as 'plants from new breeding technologies' is deceptive for a number of reasons. The term ‘breeding technologies’ obscures the fact that these are genetic engineering processes, and it potentially includes technologies that are not covered by the wording of the law. The misleading title of the law, coupled with a lack of conceptual precision in its text (e.g. how long are 'new' breeding technologies considered 'new'?), undermines both legal certainty and consumer freedom of choice. From a scientific and legal point of view, if something is genetically engineered, it must be labelled as such.
• CSS rejects the envisaged harmonisation with EU legislation on this matter. NGT-1 plants must be regulated as genetic engineering in Switzerland. They must undergo an environmental risk assessment and be labelled along the entire value chain, regardless of EU regulatory developments. The NGT-1 to NGT-3 categories are primarily regulatory constructs — the arbitrary "up to 20 modifications" threshold is not scientifically justified. Risk and equivalence should be based on phenotype, ecological function and genomic context, not the number of base pairs altered.
• The present draft regulation cannot guarantee GMO-free agriculture and production in Switzerland. Given the practical, economic and ecological obstacles, the coexistence of genetically modified and non-genetically modified plants is hardly feasible.
• The explanatory report of the Federal Office for the Environment uncritically adopts the hype and the often untested and unsubstantiated promises surrounding targeted genetic engineering techniques. It is not clear on what basis the Federal Council assumes that their use will ‘make agriculture more sustainable and increase the resilience of crops to climate change’. The question of the added value of plants produced using targeted genetic engineering techniques must be viewed extremely critically from both an ecological and an economic perspective: it must be defined much more clearly, must not be based exclusively on laboratory data, and must be reviewed at regular intervals. In addition to the speculative added value, the risks associated with the technology must also be identified and reviewed periodically.
• Overall, the NZGT draft, which was created under intense lobbying pressure and was not carefully thought through, is unacceptable in its current form. If the goal of a separate authorisation regulation for targeted genetic engineering procedures is to be pursued, it must be presented as part of a revision of the existing Genetic Engineering Act (GTG). Any such revision of the GTG must take into account the constitutional requirements (Art. 120 BV) and the legal requirements (Art. 37a para. 2 GTG). In accordance with the precautionary principle, it must place the general interest in an intact environment and human health above speculative hype (which also extends into science) and market forces, which regularly push for the deregulation of technologies for profit reasons and thus also evade their responsibility for possible damage, the risks of which are usually far greater than is commonly portrayed. 

CSS Consultation Response (German) | Stellungnahme (PDF)

CSS Consultation questionnaire (German) | Fragenkatalog Vernehmlassung (PDF)