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CRISPR-Altered Plants Are Not Going To Be Regulated (For Now) (fastcompany.com)
Good news for people who like genetically altered tomatoes and other plants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate them. From a report: The USDA not only rolled back Obama-era rules regulating genetically edited plants, but now it claims that plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology (read: CRISPR) pose "no risk," MIT's Technology Review reports. While CRISPR engineering is still a relatively new science whose full impact is not yet known, the USDA has decided that it is merely an innovative shortcut to the age-old practice of plant breeding.
Spider or goat dna is apple would mean transgenic plants. Those are still regulated.
The deregulation only applies to using CRISPR to create plants that could also have been created using traditional breeding.
The main advantage of using CRISPR that way is that it saves a lot of time and effort. Instead of doing a large number of breeding experiments and then selecting those that happen to have the desired comibination of genes one can now directly go for the desired result.
Republicans are more likely to support GMO than oppose it. Oh we have our fringe lunatics who think GMO is a government conspiracy to instill mind control or some other BS. But mostly we recognize that GMO increases output with less resources. It's good for business, good for the small farmer as well and it's feeding large parts of the world (Golden Rice).
GMO is helping to feed the world. Why would we not support it.
Meanwhile it's the Democrat loonies who push vegan this, or "Organic" that and who tend to oppose GMO and corporate farming.
You're shocked that the current administration rolled back rules set during the Obama administration and took the opposite stance?
Genetic editing is just a precisely targeted, one-generation way of modifying natural species the way we have been doing since the beginning of agriculture.
No it isn't. There are a lot of changes which are difficult or impossible to make with more traditional selective breeding methods. But that's missing the point entirely.
The problem is that people either fear or praise the tool, not the result. Saying "GMO are dangerous" is just as wrong as saying "GMO are safe."
Just because we're doing it doesn't mean we should.
What are you talking about? We've been genetically modifying plants for as long as there have been humans and it is fine. Yes we should be doing it, we will continue to do it, and the techniques for doing it are only going to get more effective. It will be effectively impossible to feed the human population without GMOs. It's not even a choice really.
I won't be satisfied about the safety of GMO until we've had a couple hundred years of informed consent trials.
So you are saying you'll never be satisfied. That isn't going to happen. Seven billion people on the planet, widespread use of GMOs using modern techniques for decades now (plus thousands of years of older techniques) and zero evidence of any negative nutritional effects across generations. If that sort of evidence isn't good enough for you then you will never be satisfied. The nutritional question is settled for all practical purposes and any negative health effects from them that might exist are clearly extremely subtle at worst. The experiment has already been run and the evidence seems clear that GMOs aren't a nutritional health risk either in the short or long term.
Now if you want to make an argument about the effects of GMOs on ecosystems being potentially harmful then you might have an argument. There the evidence is a lot less clear and there is clear evidence that use of GMOs (think roundup ready) influences our behavior in ways that have clear and demonstrable harms both direct and indirect.
Also, I defy anyone to point out a time when Nature has allowed the mixing of tomato and frog genes to produce a superior tomato.
Your DNA is absolutely loaded with code from species that are not human. The fact that you can't wrap your brain around mixing genes from seemingly unrelated species isn't evidence of a problem. You talk about nature "allowing" things as if genetics is somehow planned. That's not how it works. Genetic code doesn't have an agenda beyond reproduction. Read The Selfish Gene sometime for a more eloquent argument.
The Zika virus wasn't a problem until genetically-altered mosquitoes were released in Brazil.
Huh what? Citation please! The Zika problem is being SOLVED by genetically altered mosquitoes that are eradicating the specific species that carries the virus. This method has been far more effective at the destruction of specific targeted mosquito species than any method in the history of mankind (maybe not as much as a nuke).
The primary reason it became an epidemic in South America is because it is very new there. It's been around for centuries in Asia but cropped up in Brazil less than 5 years ago! It was brand new to the locals' immune system and thus spread like wild fire.
I don't know if you posted in jest or accidentally but if serious, it is a major disservice to BOTH sides of the debate. This example is literally the perfect, responsible type of solutions that we HOPE to achieve with genetic modification.