‘Regulate animal biotechnology based on product rather than process’

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The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

. . . “Modern” biotechnologies involving the use of rDNA are subject to a unique set of governance and regulatory requirements under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and other national regulatory frameworks. The Protocol defines “modern biotechnology” as the application of in vitro nucleic acid techniques, including recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and direct injection of nucleic acid into cells or organelles, or fusion of cells beyond the taxonomic family, that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination barriers and that are not techniques used in traditional breeding and selection. . .

Triggering governance and regulatory oversight based on an arbitrarily-defined subset of techniques rather than on the outcomes or products resulting from the use of those techniques, does nothing to address the potential harms that might be associated with non-governed processes and disadvantages governed technologies with unique regulatory burdens. Even-handed evaluation that agnostically weighs the potential benefits and risks of products rather than the techniques used to produce those products is essential to ensure that the biotechnology best suited to addressing a problem can be employed, rather than a potentially less efficient approach that is chosen solely because it avoids the complicated regulatory frameworks that are uniquely triggered by the use of a modern biotechnology.