Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and genet­ic engi­neer­ing — a dan­ger­ous mix Report When chat­bots breed new vari­eties Impacts on food pro­duc­tion are unac­cept­able Lat­est Large coali­tion against dereg­u­la­tion The genet­ic chain reac­tion must not be unleashed Stop Gene Dri­ves Cam­paign Stop gene dri­ves Maize

Save Our Seeds was found­ed in 2002 as the Berlin office of the Foun­da­tion on Future Farm­ing. Since then, we have been cam­paign­ing for respon­si­ble reg­u­la­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing. We work for agroe­co­log­i­cal and organ­ic inno­va­tion in Euro­pean and glob­al agri­cul­ture.

NEWS

A collage of headlines and quotes promoting the proclaimed benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops and genetic engineering. Text snippets include statements such as “Genetic engineering could ‘reverse the Silent Spring scenario’,” “Millions served – While the West debates the ethics of genetically modified food, Florence Wambugu is using it to feed her country,” and “GMO golden rice could save 40,000 lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying.” Other phrases emphasize medical and agricultural benefits like “Purple tomato can beat cancer,” “Genetic engineering could make crops resistant to a wide range of diseases,” and “The vilification of genetically modified crops could jeopardize efforts to feed the world’s growing population.” One quote reads, “Protest against GM crops are a crime against humanity.” The background is styled with torn-paper textures.

Bitter harvest — 30 years of broken GMO promises

23 June 2025 / Agri­cul­ture / Nature con­ser­va­tion
What­ev­er hap­pened to GM Gold­en Rice? And wasn’t GM salmon sup­posed to rev­o­lu­tionise aqua­cul­ture? Three decades after the first GMO crops were plant­ed, Save Our Seeds, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with GMWatch, with con­tri­bu­tions from Beyond GM, explores the fate of eight GMO promis­es once pre­sent­ed as game-chang­ers. The con­clu­sion: bold claims, dis­mal deliv­ery. In 1995, the US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture approved…
Read more
A spider builds a cobweb on a grain ear

More hype than harvest – the reality of new GM crops

11 June 2025 / EU
At present, only three genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops devel­oped with new tech­niques such as CRISPR/Cas are on the mar­ket world­wide. That’s the key find­ing of the New GMOs Mar­ket Report, pub­lished by the Euro­pean Non-GMO Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (ENGA) and the US-based Non-GMO Project.
Read more
Man lies in the park working on a laptop

GMO design, just a prompt away

27 May 2025 / EU
Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of our report “When Chat­bots Breed New Plant Vari­eties”, experts used a pub­licly acces­si­ble AI tool to design a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plant with nov­el insec­ti­ci­dal prop­er­ties. The exper­i­ment shows that the EU’s pro­posed leg­is­la­tion on new genom­ic tech­niques (NGT) would fail to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment from seri­ous harm if it does not take emerg­ing tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties into account.
Read more

PUBLICATIONS

Freedom of choice requires labelling and traceability of all GMOs

20 May 2025 / EU
As stake­hold­ers in the agri-food sec­tor, we call on EU pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ensure the free­dom of choice and rights for con­sumers, sup­ply chain oper­a­tors, farm­ers and breed­ers by uphold­ing manda­to­ry labelling of new GMOs obtained by new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs) as well as trace­abil­i­ty across the entire val­ue chain.
Read more

New genomic techniques

30 April 2025 / EU
The Commission’s pro­posed Reg­u­la­tion on plants obtained with New Genom­ic Tech­niques (NGT) aims to accel­er­ate mar­ket access for the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of GM plants and avoid con­sumer rejec­tion of GM food. The pro­pos­al expos­es con­sumers and the envi­ron­ment to unknown risks, jeop­ar­dis­es both organ­ic and con­ven­tion­al GMO-free agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and would lead to a surge of patent­ed GM seeds. With­out labelling of final prod­ucts, con­sumers would be left in the dark.
Read more

Big Ag prevails as EU ministers surrender to pressure

14 March 2025 / EU
Brus­sels, 14 March 2025 – The Coun­cil of Min­is­ters today reached an agree­ment on a posi­tion regard­ing the dereg­u­la­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants. In the Com­mit­tee of Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (COREPER), the Pol­ish EU Pres­i­den­cy man­aged to secure a nar­row major­i­ty for its pro­pos­al of 19 Feb­ru­ary.
Read more
to top