Abstract
The history of modern plant breeding is implicitly present in everything we cultivate and eat today. Therefore, the strategy in retail marketing to advertise premium organic products as ‘natural’ and therefore ‘safe’, as opposed to products from ‘agro-industry’ and its ‘genetically modified’ (GM) products, is highly misleading. After all, almost all food products are a product of culture, not nature, and the organic industry constitutes an important part of agro-industry as well. Yet, it is the radical simplification of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ agriculture that makes the narrative so popular, no matter if it is fiction or fact. It provides a normative orientation without the need to delve deeper into the subject. The consequences of this rather shallow debate on sustainable agriculture has led to real consequences in the form of incoherent and burdensome regulation designed to prevent the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in agriculture. The same narrative is now being extended to the latest breeding techniques associated with CRISPR Cas9 and other gene-editing tools. They tend to be labelled as GMO 2.0 by stakeholders who oppose agricultural biotechnology in general. This label was also implicitly embraced by the High Court of New Zealand as well as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in their decisions to subject the latest gene-editing techniques to GMO regulation, no matter whether the end product is transgenic or not. Especially for New Zealand, the decision runs against the country’s success story as a global powerhouse of agricultural innovation. This chapter argues that a different regulatory environment is only possible if the old GMO narrative loses its credibility with the next generation of concerned citizens. In view of the current global crises related to climate change and COVID-19, many of them find it increasingly irresponsible to discard an important platform technology such as gene-editing just because it is ‘new’. If they do not receive convincing answers to their critical questions, they may start to sort out fiction from fact on their own and integrate it into a counter-narrative that is not just more meaningful for their generation but also more effective in enabling sustainable change.
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Notes
- 1.
Classical mutagenesis a breeding techniques that involves genetic engineering but is not regulated as such. Since the mid-twentieth century, more than 3200 mutant plant varieties, produced by radiation and chemical mutagenesis or by somaclonal variation, found their way to the food market (Pathirana 2011).
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Farmers that aim to sell to European retailers have to meet this standard in one form or another, if they want to sell to European retailers. The problem with such private standards is that they do not have to comply with the WTO standards of non-discrimination and that the costs of compliance are borne exclusively by the farmers (Freidberg 2007; Aerni 2018).
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The documentary directed by Marie-Monique Robin was released in 2008 and won the Rachel Carson Prize in 2009 (see https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/).
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SDNs produce a sequence-specific DNA break that is repaired by the plant’s natural DNA repair mechanisms; as the repair is inherently imperfect, it results in target-site variants.
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Homologous recombination (HR) is the genetic consequence of physical exchange between two aligned identical DNA regions on two separate chromosomes or on the same chromosome.
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While a trigger mechanism (SDN-1, beyond SDN-1) determines whether a submitted product requires regulatory overview or not, the US regulation could still be called product rather than process-based regulation. After all, the initial product-based approach to GM crop regulation proposed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in 1986 also included an initial test to determine the regulatory pathway based on the concept of substantial equivalence (Aerni and Rieder 2001). Substantial equivalence is the initial step designed to test if there are toxicological and nutritional differences in the new food compared to a conventional counterpart. If no such differences are found, they are declared as ‘substantially equivalent’.
- 9.
2019 ROYAL SOCIETY TE APĀRANGI Report on Gene-editing (see https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Gene-Editing-FINAL-COMPILATION-compressed.pdf).
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17.2 tonnes (in carbon dioxide equivalent) per person.
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AgResearch has developed a genetically modified high metabolisable energy (HME) ryegrass with a high potential to reduce methane emissions in dairy farming by 30% while also making it more productive and less dependent on irrigation 50%. It has to be field-trialed in the United States since New Zealand law does not allow for it (see https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/article.cfm?c_id=16&objectid=12262826).
Principal scientist Greg Bryan has also found it can store more energy for better animal growth, be more resistant to drought and produce up to 23% less methane from the dairy livestock it feeds.
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Aerni, P. (2021). Exploring the Roots of the Old GMO Narrative and Why Young People Have Started to Ask Critical Questions. In: Ricroch, A., Chopra, S., Kuntz, M. (eds) Plant Biotechnology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68345-0_19
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