“The rest of the world…” warns Anna Meldolesi, “is not waiting for Europe.” CRISPR, the molecular scissors at the basis of genome editing, capable of precisely inducing a change in a specific area of the genome, have taken over from other techniques.
European research is fortunately not immobile. In fact, in the Old Continent about 90 projects are underway, mostly supported by European funds for the application of new sustainable biotechnologies to agricultural crops.
Most are concentrated in Germany (37), France manages 16 while in Italy there are 9, in our case held back by the big obstacle of not being able to carry out field trials (but something could change thanks to the presentation of a recent design by law.)
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According to [Bruno Mezzetti], one way to overcome the obstacle is to set aside Europe’s paralyzing and misinterpreted “precautionary principle,” and overcome the practice of evaluating the method and authorizing for cultivation product by product, as happens for importing the new biotechnological solutions.
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Italian and has been translated and edited for clarity.]
