People in the Global South in particular are feeling the effects of climate change through droughts and floods. Crops dry up or are washed away and they suffer from hunger. Advocates of genetic engineering, especially “new genomic technologies (NGT)”, promise that genetic engineering can solve the hunger problem. So far, all attempts to use genetic engineering to breed plants that are particularly resistant to drought have failed. Varieties have already been withdrawn and long-term studies are completely lacking.
Instead of climate-adapted plants, unregulated new genetic engineering will result in even more patents and monopolies for the large corporations. With a 50 percent market share in the global marketing of seeds, they already have a monopoly on power. “By contrast, small farmers in the Global South must be strengthened if agriculture is to be sustainable and fit for the future: By multiplying seeds, they preserve seed diversity and reduce hunger worldwide,” says Simon Degelo, seed and biodiversity expert at SWISSAID. We should also prevent uncontrolled new genetic engineering from harming smallholder agriculture in the South.
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The debate as to whether NGTs should be approved is being conducted worldwide. How genetic engineering is generated in Europe also influences regulation in the Global South. In Switzerland, the parliament extended the moratorium in 2021, but at the same time decided that there should be a legal regulation for NGTs. The industry is pushing for products from new genetic engineering to be approved without risk assessment and mandatory labeling.
The Association for GMO-free Food is therefore launching the federal popular initiative “For GMO-free food (food protection initiative, german)” on September 2024. The initiative calls for strict rules on the use of genetic engineering in Swiss agriculture in order to protect people, animals and the environment.
More than 137,000 signatures were collected in support of the initiative, which was officially submitted on February 2025.
The specific demands of the initiative can be read here (in german).
