Documents released to Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) by the Dutch Ministry of Health reveal an industry-aligned collaboration between biotech corporations, researchers and regulators, that seeks to weaken UN biosafety discussions on risk assessment of GMOs and new genetic engineering techniques like Synthetic Biology.

With a new round of UN talks on the issue taking place in Montreal in the next two weeks, pro-industry bias in the forum puts public interests and environmental protection at risk, Corporate Europe Observatory warns in a new report.

The emails released by the Dutch authorities illustrate how industry, researchers and some regulators have been coordinating themselves ahead of UN negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) to promote weakened oversight of GMOs and new genetic technologies. This comes at an important moment for the EU regulation of these new techniques, with an important European Court of Justice ruling expected for 25 July 2018.