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.

Comments

*Head asplodes*

[Nidi62]

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.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

If the radiation is to create mutations in the seed, then that is not the same as irradiating your food. They're merely trying to increase the rate of mutations in hope that some are positive mutations.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[Tx]

Firstly, they're not talking about irradiating the food that ends up on your plate. They're talking about using radiation to increase natural mutation rates in the process of developing new strains. Crops subsequently grown from those strains are in no way "irradiated".

Secondly, there are lots of different kinds of radiation. Sunlight is radiation, and it is mutagenic, hence skin cancer if you don't cover up. It's highly unlikely that they are using the kind of radiation that leaves things radioactive for this kind of thing, they'll be using gamma rays or weak x-rays. All your looking for is a mutation rate a few times higher than would occur naturally in sunlight, and the plants would at no stage be radioactive.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[fph il quozientatore]

True. Nevertheless, I still find it safer to eat food with one precisely crafted modification, rather than food that has gone through random mutations, including possibly dangerous unintended ones.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[ShanghaiBill]

rather than food that has gone through random mutations

Every single thing you eat has random mutations, whether from background radiation, cosmic rays, viruses, errors during mitosis/meiosis, etc.

What the Europeans are doing is technophobic nonsense, with no basis in science. The courts should not be used to enforce superstitions.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[Oswald McWeany]

rather than food that has gone through random mutations

Every single thing you eat has random mutations, whether from background radiation, cosmic rays, viruses, errors during mitosis/meiosis, etc.

What the Europeans are doing is technophobic nonsense, with no basis in science. The courts should not be used to enforce superstitions.

I think there is definitely an irrational fear of GMO food in Europe; however, some caution is needed- when you're doing some of the things you're doing with CRISPR you're bypassing what would take, in some cases, millions of generations of selective breeding, to get a gene in place that doesn't naturally exist anywhere in that species.

There needs to be some common sense and oversight, to make sure, for example, pesticide resistance in a crop doesn't get crossed with a wild relative of the crop and spread to a wild population of an undesirable plant.

Yeah, that could happen with selective breeding too... but there would be many-many between generations where you'd probably catch that first.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[ShanghaiBill]

to make sure, for example, pesticide resistance in a crop doesn't get crossed with a wild relative of the crop and spread to a wild population of an undesirable plant.

The OBVIOUS way to ensure this doesn't happen is to edit out the pollen production so that the GMO plant IS NOT CAPABLE OF REPRODUCTION. The gene can't pass to the wild stock if there is nothing being passed.

This is known as a "terminator gene", and the anti-GMO activists vehemently objected to it, and were successful in getting terminator genes banned in both Europe and America.

Why? Answer: Because it removes one of their best objections to GMO. They want to make GMO intentionally MORE RISKY just so that they have stronger objections. They don't want GMO to be safe, they want it to be banned, at any cost.

The actions of these idiots are indefensible.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[Applehu Akbar]

Irradiating dead organisms to preserve food is totally safe, and if we weren’t such gibbering idiots when the R-word is mentioned would eliminate the salmonella recalls we seem to be getting weekly now. But that is not the kind of irradiation this article is talking about.

One of the standard techniques for inducing mutations in agricultural breeding is to blast crops with gamma radiation from a Cobalt-60 source. The label Luddites who won’t let us use modern genetic engineering techniques accept this as a form of conventional hybridization.

Re:*Head asplodes*

[ShanghaiBill]

On the other hand, including a terminator gene sounds like a pretty excellent way to create DRM for plants.

We already have that. Most seeds planted by 1st-world farmers are either GMO or hybrids, and new seed is purchased each year. For most crops, farmers do not save seeds from one year to the next.

3rd-world farmers routinely save seeds for planting, but this leads to far lower productivity. They would be much better off buying hybrid or GMO seeds annually. The higher yields and decreased inputs (insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizer) would way more than make up for the cost of the seeds.

With terminator genes, anyone who wanted to continue to replant traditional/heirloom seeds would still be able to do so, and would actually have more protection, since there would be no risk of inadvertent cross pollination from GMO stocks.

It is absurd that our current law REQUIRES the unwanted spreading of GMO pollen into the wind.

Maze of circular logic

[oh_my_080980980]

“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.

Re:Maze of circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

A million times this ^^^

I'm a molecular biologist / biochemist and yes CRISPR edited/modified or other way, should be treated as GMO and labeled as such. This is not because I'm against this new technology but the outcome is essentially the same and therefor the level playing field should be too. The majority of Uber opponents have nothings against Uber.. just against the lack of regulation for one type of "Taxis" but not the others.

Re:Maze of circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

so then under this logic traditional crossbreeds should be labeled as GMO as well

Re:Maze of circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

If CRISPR/CAS9 is treated as GMO, so should be (nuclear|chemical) mutation breeding. That is the issue here. Random mutation is acceptable (even without human trials) but carefully edited DNA is unacceptable. Something is definitely wrong!

PS: I am Ph.D student in medical science.

Re:Maze of circular logic

[jabuzz]

This is the issue. So the clueless judges are saying it's find to blast away with nuclear/chemical mutation with mass genomics screening till I get the mutation I want at great expense and I don't need to label it as GMO. Noting that unless I do a full DNA sequence I will almost certainly get a bunch of other unwanted edits.

However if I make exactly the same change using CRISPR/Cas9 ir CRISPER/Cpf1 then I have to label it GMO. That just defies common sense. Then again to expect Judges anywhere in the world to grasp what is going on is asking a lot. Well it's not really asking a lot, if they don't get it they should not be ruling on it. However the percentage of judges with any scientific training is very low.

Idiots

[tsa]

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.

Re:Idiots

[Rick Schumann]

Consider this: Monsanto created GMO seeds that were protected Intellectual Property, then had to sue some farmers, in adjacent fields, who weren't purchasing them because cross polination had migrated the GMO genes into their crops. Also consider this: corporations spend many many millions of dollars developing GMO versions of plants, and since they aren't non-profits, they (and more to the point their investors and stockholders) expect timely return-on-investment -- therefore they'll rush things to market, much as Monsanto did, regardless of possible consequences. Pharmaceutical companies do this every day, having their legal departments weigh possible lawsuits due to bad reactions or death resulting from use of a drug against overall profitability. The difference here is that GMO crops are literally (as described above) the genie released from the bottle; once it's out in the wild, you're not getting it back, it's out there for good. So considering all the above, what makes you think that a profit-oriented company, armed with a device and method to allow them to modify the genes of pretty much anything, aren't going to rush something to market that may have unintended and disasterous long-term effects once it's out in Earth's biosphere? I personally used to worry about all the GMO crops that were being introduced but I don't waste the energy anymore because it's too late now, they're out there, and if in another 20 or 30 years we see some terrible unintended side-effect of the gene editing that causes a major disaster, then what are we to do? Meanwhile the EU is being smarter about it than our own legislators here in the U.S. have been (or less corrupted by corporate influences?) and are thinking about the possible long-term effects, and doing what they can to make it as safe as possible without totally stifling innovation. The fact that some bad actors in non-EU countries may do reckless things with the technology is irrelevant, and at best we can hope that there aren't scientists out there who are willing to be totally irresponsible and reckless with the technology themselves. It may all be for nothing but I applaud the EU for being careful where it counts.

Re:Idiots

[Cyberax]

Monsanto hasn’t sued farmers who simply got some cross-pollinated crops. Not once. Not a single time.

Re:Idiots

[bws111]

Plants have been patentable since the 1930s. The ability to patent seeds has nothing to do with GMO.

Re:Idiots

[Tinsoldier314]

The case is widely cited or referenced by the anti-GM community in the context of a fear of a company claiming ownership of a farmer’s crop based on the inadvertent presence of GM pollen grain or seed.[25][26] "The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If anyone wants more information on the case he's citing, it's well documented on wikipedia.

Shotgun surgery: okay; Scapels: no

[swillden]

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.

Re:Shotgun surgery: okay; Scapels: no

[drinkypoo]

Its funny that no one is talking about that OTHER unscientific thing: 'Organic' food. Last I checked, all food has carbon in it, so all food is organic by definition, but that's only what 'organic' means to educated people.

Organic is a terrible name. Let's just get agreeing with that out of the way right now. But organic farming practices, as envisioned by their creators, are utterly sound. The underlying premise is that in a community producing its own food, soil health is tied to the health of the community, and systems must be cyclical in order to be functional. Specifically, both human and animal waste must be returned to the fields which produce food. This is perfectly safe when done correctly, or at least it was before the invention of pharmaceuticals which persist even though sewage treatment. And in fact, although there was a significant lull where we did little of it in the modern world, it is now once again typical for sewage sludge to be treated and converted to fertilizer.

Governments have taken over the right to define what is or is not "organic" farming, e.g. "USDA Organic". But organic farming is more than simply choosing fertilizers and pesticides off of an approved list. It's also a collection of practices.

To the average consumer, "organic" currently means no-GMO, and using only "natural" pesticides and fertilizers. But that misunderstanding is due to a concerted effort by corporate farming and by government alike.

Re:it's funny

[bws111]

I didn't say is would be useful, I said it could be useful. An example would be to someone that has an allergy. On the other hand, a generic 'GMO' label is useful to nobody.