Origins of the CPB
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) is a single-use sub-agreement of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The impetus for the CPB arose from European government and the environmental movements’ opposition to biotechnology applications in agriculture. Based on speculation, not evidence, the CPB solely focuses on the production and transport of genetically modified (GM) crops, making it an agreement focused on a single process. The CPB aims to ensure the safe handling, transport, and use of GM crops, known as living modified organisms (LMOs) in the agreement, resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. Adopted on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003, the CPB was enacted nearly a decade after the first approved GM crops. At the time of its enforcement, scientists full well knew the agreement to be based on speculation, as they were aware that the previous 15 years had been full of GM crop experimental trials and commercial production, which confirmed the safety of their production and consumption.
Wisely, top GM crop-producing countries refused to ratify and adopt the CPB. This means the majority of GM crop production and trade is not bound by the CPB. Leading GM-producing countries like Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the USA, whose production accounts for 57% of global GM crop production, all reject the CPB. Over the past 20 years, no agreement has stifled innovation, reduced sustainability, and had a negative impact on reducing food insecurity more than the CPB. European-based environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) used European Union (EU) funding to aggressively lobby in African and Asian food-insecure countries to ban and reject GM crops. In 2014, the EU’s Ambassador to Kenya, Lodewijk Briet was quoted as saying that “[l]ocal farmers will find it difficult to export their crops to Europe if they adopt the Genetically Modified (GM) crops”. The EU resorted to extortion to ensure that food-insecure countries rejected the technology that could increase yields and offer a tool to reduce food insecurity.
The Problem with Process-Based Agreements
Regulations based on the product that is produced have proven to be the most endurable, as they still robustly assess the potential for risk from the product as the technologies used to create the product improve and change over time. Genetically modified crop technology began in the mid-1980s with field trials of canola, corn, cotton, and soybeans, with regulatory frameworks established in the early 1990s to assess the potential risks of this technology. These regulatory frameworks have functioned, with some updates for 30 years and are well-situated to address the changes in technology that have occurred over this period. Product-based regulatory systems are transitioning to gene editing technologies that don’t result in foreign DNA being present in the commercialized variety, resulting in the efficient regulation of these new products. A vast number of countries have used their regulatory framework to determine that if a gene-edited variety doesn’t contain any foreign DNA, then it’s not a GM crop and will not require assessment through GM crop regulations.
The leading exception to this is the EU. The EU developed their regulatory framework for GM crops in the early 2000s, resulting in a process-based system that only regulates the technologies used to create a new GM variety. The issue much of the rest of the world has with this method of regulation is that the EU has realized that its current regulatory system is completely incapable of regulating gene editing technologies. This is because the EU has no mandate to be able to assess innovative crop varieties developed by processes other than genetic modification. The result is that the EU is once again in regulatory gridlock, unable to determine how to proceed, resulting in a high level of uncertainty as to how to regulate gene editing technologies. While they are working to find a solution, as they have been holding discussions and consultations for the past four years, there still is no solution in sight.
The Irrelevance of the CPB
As public and private plant breeders increasingly shift to using gene editing technologies, the CPB has become as relevant as steam locomotives in today’s transportation world. As gene editing technologies are not the same as genetically modified technologies and crops, leading non-EU crop producing countries have provided risk appropriate regulations for gene editing technologies. Within the next decade, there is an extremely high likelihood that virtually all new crop varieties will be developed by one of the increasing number of gene editing technologies. Given that the CPB is only applicable to GM technologies, it should be dumped on the trash heap where it best belongs.
