They want senators to support the Green's disallowance motion on Wednesday to help reverse the federal government's decision to remove regulation on Genetically Modified Organisms through an amendment to the Gene Technology bill.

Their plea comes after Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon confirmed the Labor Party would not support the disallowance motion.

The Greens need the support of the crossbench and Labor to get the motion over the line.

The amendment was implemented in October and removes the checks and balances on some of the latest genetically modified techniques, including SDN-1 and CRISPR.

Mr Fitzgibbon said the techniques were not a threat to human health and the changes would remove unnecessary red tape and regulation. His comments have been met with disagreement.

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"Keep the red tape and the regulations - otherwise we have no checks and balances for the future," Slow Food Hunter Valley's Amorelle Dempster said.

"If these techniques are released they would be used for food. The politicians are accepting the government's assurances that this will not affect the food system. They will affect our food system.

"We want red tape when it affects our food system - we want to make sure that it is regulated and that big business is not allowed to use these techniques and play with our food system for their benefit."

Gene Ethics executive director Bob Phelps is equally concerned and pointed to other industries that had been deregulated as a way of showing that it wasn't always the best action.

He said all gene manipulation processes and products had been under strict regulation through the Office of Gene Technology Regulator, which was tasked with assessing and licensing it before it was released for use.

He is worried the SDN-1 and CRISPR techniques will have long-term health effects that won't be known straight away - similar to what has happened with smoking and Roundup.

"Trying to remedy the harm and wrongs that premature deregulation does is time consuming, ineffective and enormously expensive, as seen with aged care, banking, child sexual abuse, asbestos, PFAS and flammable cladding on buildings, among a multitude of examples. Premature GM deregulation would be a repeat," he said.

"Scientists and industry know the new GM methods are flawed but ambition, shortsightedness and profit motives drive them to back deregulation despite the hazards, risks and costs to others."

Friends of the Earth Emerging Tech Project Coordinator Louise Sales said the government's decision had already opened the door to the use of gene-editing techniques in plants, microbes and animals - and there had been problems with gene-edited cattle in America.

She pointed to the Food and Drug Administration scientists in America that found gene-edited hornless cattle had antibiotic resistant bacterial genes and said this was another reason why regulation was necessary.

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