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European Court Ruling Raises Hurdles For CRISPR Crops (sciencemag.org)
Okian Warrior shares a report from Science Magazine: Hopes for an easier regulatory road for genetic engineering in European agriculture were dashed by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In a closely watched decision, the court ruled that plants created with new gene-editing techniques that don't involve transferring genes between organisms -- such as CRISPR -- must go through the same lengthy approval process as traditional transgenic plants. Many researchers had argued that regulators should take a lighter touch when evaluating products created with the new technologies, but environmental groups and their allies successfully argued that they should be subject to the same EU rules that apply to other genetically modified organisms.
The case focused on crops that have been made resistant to herbicides without transferring genes from other species. The French government had passed a law exempting these new gene-edited crops from regulation under the European Union's directive on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which requires an assessment of risks to health and the environment, as well as labeling, tracking, and monitoring of the products. Confederation Paysanne, a French union in Bagnolet representing small farms, and eight other groups, sued and charged that the plants modified with gene-editing techniques should be regulated under the GMO directive, because they could cause significant harm. The court decided that gene-editing techniques are covered by the GMO directive because they "alter the genetic material of an organism in a way that does not occur naturally." (The court exempted conventional mutagenesis -- the unnatural use of chemicals or radiation to create mutations for plant breeding -- because it has "a long safety record.") It also said the new gene-editing techniques have risks that could be similar to those of transgenic engineering.
The case focused on crops that have been made resistant to herbicides without transferring genes from other species. The French government had passed a law exempting these new gene-edited crops from regulation under the European Union's directive on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which requires an assessment of risks to health and the environment, as well as labeling, tracking, and monitoring of the products. Confederation Paysanne, a French union in Bagnolet representing small farms, and eight other groups, sued and charged that the plants modified with gene-editing techniques should be regulated under the GMO directive, because they could cause significant harm. The court decided that gene-editing techniques are covered by the GMO directive because they "alter the genetic material of an organism in a way that does not occur naturally." (The court exempted conventional mutagenesis -- the unnatural use of chemicals or radiation to create mutations for plant breeding -- because it has "a long safety record.") It also said the new gene-editing techniques have risks that could be similar to those of transgenic engineering.
The court exempted conventional mutagenesis -- the unnatural use of chemicals or radiation to create mutations for plant breeding -- because it has "a long safety record."
Maybe it's just because I've played so much Fallout, but I'll take genetically edited food over irradiated food any day....cutting out genes (and as the summary says, not adding genes-especially genes from other organisms)has to be inherently safer than dosing what's destined to be our food with radiation.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
“To classify gene-edited crops as GMOs and equivalent to transgenic crops is completely incorrect by any scientific definition,” said Nick Talbot, a molecular geneticist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. “Precise modern gene-editing technologies allow accurate, predictable changes to be made in a genome.” http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
Translation:
"No, no, no, no. It's not a new number. It's--it's--it's just a changed number. See? It's not different. It's the same, just...changed."
Survey says:
"A genetically modified organism (GMO) is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques (i.e., a genetically engineered organism)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The question was not about the precision of the modification. It was about it being modified. You've altered the genetic material, it means you've modified it! Hand back your degree.
how the corporations crying about "free market" want to take the most important feature - an INFORMED decision - away from the customers by hiding GMO content in products.
If it's such a great thing, the customers will surely decide to buy these products themselves.
I think this decision is simply idiotic. Gene editing will happen anyway anywhere on the planet and people will get rich from it. If I were the EU I'd make sure this happened within my places of jurisdiction so we benefit from it. We missed the gene editing boat in the 1990s due to a similar decision, and now we do it again. Unbelievable. This decision is clearly made to please the public who have no idea what genetic modification means, other than that it's 'scary' and 'unnatural.' This is not the way to do politics. Often what people want is not what is good for the people.
-- Cheers!
This decision makes no sense. First, there's a ridiculous amount of respect given to "natural" processes, as though they're anything other than purely random. But the really dumb part is considering targeted, controlled editing to be more dangerous than dousing plants in mutagenic chemicals and/or radiation in order to accelerate selective breeding. In the former case, we may not have a perfect understanding of what the change is going to do, but in the latter case we have no idea what the changes even are, we just know that there are orders of magnitude more of them than normal.
It's like deciding that it's safer to do an appendectomy with a shotgun than with a scalpel.
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If the GMO industry actually tried to produce useful strains, instead of the usual "let's make it more resistant to poison so it's the only thing that grows after soaking soils in chemicals", it may find more sympathetic European ears
As it is no one here except for Bayer actually wants to help the agro industry poison European soil and European people. All for a few years of improved yields, that will be negated as soon as pests grow poison-resistant, while humans get sick long-term (because humans do not reproduce fast enough to adapt to those "innovations").
Will be interesting to see how they will regulate it,,for GMO you can easily test for the transgenic protein. Gene editing for the removal of an existing protein will require testing for the absence of that protein,,more difficult, especially in mixed grain exported commodity barge, trains, trucks,etc. Like testing for Organic,,can't be done in a lab
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...
The European Commission has long attempted to justify its strict health and environmental regulations as necessary to protect the public from uncertain risk associated with genetically modified crops. The World Bank report debunks this myth and offers empirical evidence of the commission's true motives.
What is really behind the commission's stringent regulations is European industry's comparative disadvantage in the use of genetically modified, or GM, crop technology. In drawing this conclusion, the study points to the significant role played by European industry in lobbying for protectionist barriers.
Transgenic sequences would stick out, but if you CRISPR away just a few things here and there, and pass it off as conventionally mutated, it doesn't seem to me they'd be able to tell very easily. It'd be unethical, but seems like the type of thing a tiny LLC could perpetually license to a big firm before inexplicably going bankrupt and burning down... if only they'd thought to put their development documents in offsite archive...
Nuclear/chemicals are used as natural process catalyst (accelerate evolution through random mutation) and damn, nature has been proved not safe for years (How many natural thing just kill you?). Random mutations without trials is never never safer than chirurgical editing with a lot of trials.
The question is not whether the random mutation are more or less safe compared to chirurgical editing. (Over time, crispr will probably turn out to be safer)
The question is that random mutation have always been happening forever. And radiation has been used to increase these mutations in a slightly better controlled fashion since almost as long as radiations have been studied (what do you think did inspire all these super-hero origin stories involving radiation ?).
So we have a rough idea and several decades of practical experience about rate at which things coming out of this are going to kill you.
With all this data, it can be considered proven.
Crispr/Cas9 has been in use for less than a decade. That's a lot less than the decades of radiation accelerating natural mutations. That's a tiny blimp since natural random mutations occur. We don't have a lot of data yet. We can't prove that it has a certain level of safety. Maybe after 20 years, we'll end up noticing that there are some unforeseen consequences.
The EU logic : let's put strong regulation on it until we know more about them.
(Note: I'm just explaining the logic. I don't necessarily agree with it).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"must go through the same lengthy approval process as traditional transgenic plants."
Yeah!
CRISPER is just as dangerous if not more so.
Yum!