The European Union is finally coming around to gene-edited seeds For a quarter century, activists such as Vandana Shiva have opposed GM crops that can help feed the world. Now, more than ever, it is time to reject their Luddite demands. In 2021, the European Union announced that it would be reviewing its 2001-era legislation governing genetically modified (GM) organisms, so as to properly account for the recent development of “gene-edited” crops, which are produced using what is known as New Genomic Techniques (NGT). To laypeople, the distinction between the various technology types may seem obscure. But from a scientific point of view, the difference is significant. Genetically modified organisms ‐ also known as transgenic organisms, or GMOs ‐ have been around since the 1990s. Many well-known GMOs have been developed by combining DNA from different types of organisms, a process that has aroused fears of “frankenfoods” (a pejorative term coined three decades ago by Boston College professor Paul Lewis, who wrote that if they want to sell us Frankenfood, perhaps it is time to gather the villagers, light some torches and head to the castle. By contrast, NGTs allow scientists to manipulate specific regions of a genome directly ‐ so as to reduce the need for pesticides, resist disease, boost yields, or enhance resilience in the face of climate change ‐ without importing genetic material from outside sources.