Questions & Answers

Food labelling rules in the EU may soon change.

If current proposals are adopted, it could become impossible to know whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are present in our food. 

This would take away a basic consumer right: the right to know what we eat. Our freedom of choice is at stake. 

Until now, all genetically modified (GM) food in the EU must be clearly labelled.  

For more than twenty years, consumers across Europe have chosen to avoid GM food. In response, most supermarkets have decided not to stock it, and farmers do not see the benefit of growing GM crops. 

GM food is not banned in the EU. There simply isn’t any demand for it.

The EU is considering new legislation that would exclude most GM plants from its GMO legislation.

The plants excluded from the safety rules in the future are those engineered with new techniques such as CRISPR-Cas – also called “gene editing techniques”. For these, Standard EU GMO requirements, such as safety checks, consumer labelling, or traceability, would no longer apply. 

The new legislation defines gene-edited plants to be equal to plants from conventional breeding.

But gene editing can introduce genetic changes that are impossible to achieve through conventional plant breeding. The resulting plants cannot simply be assumed to be free of risks to human health or the environment. 

Moreover, most Europeans want to know whether their food is genetically modified. The new legislation will make GM food effectively invisible, leaving us no choice but to buy it.

Surveys in several EU countries show that a majority of consumers want strict rules and clear labelling for all types of GM food, including the latest generation.

People want to decide for themselves whether they buy GM products. 

Farmers are concerned about contamination of their fields, for example in organic or conventional GMO-free farming.

All existing safeguards against contamination, as well as liability regulations, are set to be abolished.

GMO-free food production will become difficult and very expensive. Yet farmers want to grow what consumers want: GMO-free food.

Farmers fear conflicts and legal disputes, especially if they deliberately choose to grow GMO-free crops.

Farmers also fear a wave of patenting. This is because new genetically modified plants are patentable. Patents hinder free breeding and lead to even greater concentration in the seed market. This means fewer but more expensive varieties and dependence on patent holders—a handful of large genetic engineering corporations.
 

The new legislation would benefit large seed companies that already dominate the commercial seed market. They hold most patents on genetically modified plants and hope for easier market access, without safety checks and labelling. 

Consumers, plant breeders, and farmers would pay the price. Consumers would lose the possibility to choose GMO-free food. For small and medium-sized plant breeding companies and organic farmers, the consequences could be existential. It remains unclear how they can maintain GMO-free breeding and farming under a system that removes protections for them. 

Most likely in mid-May, the EU Parliament will vote, for the third time, on whether all generations of GM food should remain labelled or not. 

The EU Parliament has already voted twice on this legislation. Back in 2024, it decided to maintain some form of GMO labelling. However, a majority of national ministers decided that we should be kept in the dark. The text currently on the table follows the ministers’ view. 

Now the EU Parliament has the opportunity to change this and defend the right to know for all of us. 

EU Parliamentarians need to hear from you before making that choice. This is our last chance to avoid losing our right to know what we eat. 

Please share the story: inform your friends and family about the change in labelling that is coming. Invite them to our website or to our messenger communities. You can find materials for sharing in the download section of this website. 

You can also write to your EU parliamentarians using this very simple tool here; it only takes two minutes. https://www.blacked-out-ingredients.eu/en/take-action/  

Civil society organisations and associations can support this campaign by encouraging their members to share this initiative and join the messaging groups.