International organizations

In less than a year and a half, from May 3, 2022 to October 12, 2023, the previous European Commission has launched a number of legislative initiatives concerning the Living. The deregulation of GMOs, the digitization of living organisms and even patents are just some of the issues on the table of member states and the European Parliament. If adopted, these projects will make it easier for companies with substantial financial, human and technical resources to take ownership of the Living. These initiatives do echo current international negotiations.

What are the links between new techniques of genetic modification, digitization of genetic sequences information and patents? Inf’OGM publishes here an analysis presented in June 2024 at a regional workshop organized by the African Center for Biodiversity, in Durban (South Africa). It was written by Guy Kastler, representative of the international farmers’ organization La Via Campesina at various ITPGRFA and CBD meetings. 

For the past fifteen years, governments have been discussing “synthetic biology” on an international level. If to date, an “operational” definition exists, the outlines of this field remain hard to draw. Are talks of “synthetic biology” simply a change of semantics, or a genuinely new frontier of the biotechnology field? For the moment, examples of organisms or molecules obtained by synthetic biology are accumulating: unnatural proteins, GMO plants, GMO bacteria, recreated viruses, modification of living organisms directly in the environment, GMO insects, xenobacteria…