Economic and Environmental Consequences of the ECJ Genome Editing Judgement in Agriculture

Alexander Gocht, Nicola Consmüller, Ferike Thom and Harald Grethe

No 305817, Thünen Working Paper from Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut (vTI), Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries

Abstract: Genome edited crops are on the verge of being placed on the market and their agricultural and food products will thus be internationally traded soon. National regulation, however, diverges regarding the classification of genome edited crops. Major countries such as the US and Brazil do not specifically regulate genome edited crops, while in the European Union they fall under GMO legislation, according to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). As it is in some cases impossible to analytically distinguish products from genome edited plants compared to non-genome edited plants, EU importers may fear the risk of violating EU legislation. They may choose to not import anymore agricultural and food products based on crops, for which genome edited varieties are available. As a consequence, crop products, for which the EU is currently a net importer, would become more expensive in the EU and production would intensify. Furthermore, strong substitution among products covered and not covered by genome editing would occur in consumption, production and trade. We analyse the effects of such a cease of EU imports for cereals and soy on the EU agricultural sector with the comparative static agricultural sector equilibrium model CAPRI. Our results indicate that effects on agricultural and food prices as well as farm income are strong, and the intensification of EU agriculture may result in negative net environmental effects in the EU as well as increases in global greenhouse gas emissions. This suggests that the trade effects should be taken into account when developing domestic regulation for genome edited crops.

Keywords: International Relations/Trade; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2020-10-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/305817/files/dn062466.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic and environmental consequences of the ECJ genome editing judgement in agriculture (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:jhimwp:305817

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.305817

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Thünen Working Paper from Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut (vTI), Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().