TWN Info Service on Biosafety
22 December 2025
Third World Network
www.twn.my
Dear Friends and Colleagues
Deregulation of Gene Edited Organisms Poses a Serious Threat to Biosecurity
This briefing highlights that attempts to deregulate gene edited organisms, including the EU’s current proposals for plants created using new genomic techniques (NGTs), pose a major threat to biosecurity.
Allowing small genetic changes (that supposedly ‘could have occurred naturally’) to bypass regulatory scrutiny is no guarantee of safety. Gene editing could lead to the evolution of more dangerous pathogens, or the creation of undetected reservoirs of dangerous pathogens, which could lead to more serious animal, plant and human diseases.
Even where deregulation is limited to plants, as is the case with the current proposal for NGTs in the EU, such gene-edited plants will not be risk assessed, monitored, traceable or labelled. Biosecurity issues which are difficult or impossible to trace or tackle could be created by the evolution of plant pathogens in response to disease-resistant gene-edited seeds or reproductive material that are grown or imported. Both scenarios would adversely affect plant health within a country, as well as exports from it, with potentially serious impacts on food security, food prices and on farmers, food manufacturers and retailers.
With best wishes,
Third World Network
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BIOSECURITY UNDER THREAT: GENE-EDITED ANIMALS, PLANTS AND MICRO-ORGANISMS
GeneWatch UK
https://tinyurl.com/axsf7bc
November 2025
[…]
Conclusions
Gene-edited organisms, like all genetically modified organisms (GMOs), pose risks because they are living organisms, which interact with other organisms and the wider environment once they are released. These risks are not limited to whether the gene-edited organism itself (whether deliberately or unintentionally) produces a new harmful chemical that is toxic or causes allergies, or whether the organism is itself a high-risk pathogen.
In the case of GM disease-resistant animals and plants (whether produced using gene editing or not), major risks are:
- the potential evolution of the target pathogen (e.g. virus, bacteria or fungus) so that it becomes more harmful or more transmissible; and
- the creation of ‘silent reservoirs’ of disease in plants or animals that are infected but show no obvious signs of the disease.
Importantly, disease-resistance is an example of a trait that may pose more risk if it is based on a single, small genetic change, as this makes the evolution of the target pathogen more likely and more rapid. However, introducing more genetic changes does not necessarily solve this problem, as it could simply delay the detection of the evolution of the pathogen.
Experiments aimed at developing gene-edited bird flu-resistant chickens, in the UK, should have acted as a wake-up call for regulators. In these experiments, scientists inadvertently caused the bird flu virus to evolve to become more transmissible to humans. If such gene edited animals were to be released into the environment in future, they could cause a major biosecurity incident or even a pandemic. These experiments have proved that even small genetic changes cannot be assumed to be safe when a gene-edited organism is released into the environment.
In the case of GM micro-organisms (including gene-edited micro-organisms), new virulence traits, or other undesirable properties (such as antibiotic resistance) can arise in organisms that are not currently considered high risk, even as a result of introducing a single, small genetic change. This could pose major biosecurity risks to humans, animals and plants, including the potential to cause a new pandemic.
Even where deregulation is limited to plants, deregulated gene-edited plants (which may include wild species and trees, as well as food and feed crops) will not be risk assessed, monitored, traceable or labelled. Hence biosecurity issues which are difficult or impossible to trace or tackle could be created by the evolution of pathogens in response to:
- supposedly disease-resistant gene-edited seeds or reproductive material grown within a state or a trading bloc (such as the EU);
- imported seeds, reproductive material, and plants that are capable of reproduction and have been gene-edited to create disease-resistant traits.
Both these scenarios would adversely affect plant health within the country or trading bloc as well as exports from it, with potentially serious impacts on food security, food prices and the economics of the food chain (farmers, food manufacturers and retailers).