Advocates for the biotech industry look set to have a unique opportunity to make the point during the coming months, with the UK government announcing a change in policy in late September, liberating scientists from the regulation inherited from EU membership.
In August, Rothamsted received the go-ahead to begin field trials for a gene-edited wheat variant.
The Rothamsted project illustrates how gene editing can support food companies’ sustainability goals beyond agriculture and the environment. Using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, the wheat’s genome has been edited to reduce levels of the naturally occurring amino acid, asparagine, which is converted to the carcinogenic processing contaminant, acrylamide, when bread is baked or toasted.
…
Professor Lars Østergaard… emphasises the important role gene editing will have to play in expanding agricultural production to meet the growing demand for plant-based food.
“I would say that it’s definitely a technology that we simply cannot afford to miss at this point where we are, in terms of climate change, but also in the direction the public really wants us to go in terms of plant-based food production,” Prof. Østergaard tells Just Food.
