The article below from The Times expresses really well yet another ridiculous ruling from Brussels.  Can it be right that the UK be subject to these insane Luddite rulings that will set back European agriculture for decades?  If the UK accepts common standards on a soft Brexit with the EU we will be tying ourselves to these unelected bureaucrats drawn from the likes of Luxemburg and other ill-managed states.  Junker, Tusk et al are a bunch of politically snide nobodies propelled by dubious methods into very far-reaching positions of power.  They have proven time and again they are examples of a failed giant bureaucracy which costs an enormous amount of damage both financially and ethically.  You only have to look at the mess of the PIGS area where generations of young people have been condemned to poverty and dwindling prospects. How can anyone want to belong to an organization that perpetrated such horrors on its so-called friends?

Now this latest ruling from the ECJ what a travesty!

Matt Ridley of The Times puts it better than I ever could, just read it and see what a soft Brexit will bring.

‘The European Court of Justice has just delivered a scientifically absurd ruling, in defiance of advice from its advocate general, but egged on by Jean-Claude Juncker’s allies. It will ensure that more pesticides are used in Britain, our farmers will be less competitive and researchers will leave for North America. Thanks a bunch, your honours.

By saying that genome-edited crops must be treated to expensive and uncertain regulation, it has pandered to the views of a handful of misguided extremists, who no longer have popular support in this country.

Let’s compare two plant varieties: golden promise barley and a wheat resistant to a fungal pest called powdery mildew. The barley was derived from seeds bombarded with gamma rays at a nuclear facility in the 1950s, scrambling some of their genes, which had the happy if accidental result of making better malting barley. It became (and remains) a popular variety for brewing beer among (wait for it!) organic farmers.

The wheat was produced by Calyxt, a US company, last year using a genome editing technique to tweak one part of one gene, introducing no foreign DNA.  It will need less fungicide spray than normal wheat. The US Government says it needs no further legislation or regulation.  The EU has effectively said it will take Calyxt many years and vast sums of money to find out whether it might or might not approve the wheat for cultivation.

Calyxt and others wont bother applying, so we will be deprived of the chance to use less fungicide.  We will miss out on a new genome edited potato variety that requires 80% less spray.  We are already missing out on GM varieties of mauze and other crops that use much less insecticide and are proven safe after 25 years of consumption.