BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's top court has ruled that a series of new biotechnology breeding techniques should fall under the EU's rules of safety checks and labeling restricting genetically modified organisms.

Biotech companies have been working on a new generation of technologies to change genetic material in plants or animals, and it had long been debated whether they need to match the EU's rules limiting genetic modification, which are much stricter than in the United States.

Mute Schimpf of Friends of the Earth Europe welcomed Wednesday's ruling at the European Court of Justice, saying that under the ruling the new techniques "must be fully tested before they are let out in the countryside and in our food."