European Commission plans to relax laws on genetically-modified food

Many genetically modified foods could end up unlabelled on European supermarket shelves, according to a legislative proposal by the European Commission.

This would be the result of an unpublished draft commission regulation, seen by dpa.

The draft regulation would exempt certain genetically-modified plants from the EU's strict rules on genetic engineering.

The proposal is expected to be officially presented in July.

The planned rule changes mean that processes such as CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors would not be subject to EU genetic engineering rules if the resulting varieties could also have been created by processes such as cross breeding or natural selection.

The CRISPR/Cas9 tool allows geneticists to make precise changes in long DNA chains, to make plants more resistant to drought and pests. According to the plans, such modification would fall under the so-called category 1 of plants bred by new techniques (NGT).

Under the planned regulations the strict genetic engineering rules for organic agriculture would continue to apply.