Viewpoint: New Zealand’s case for genetically edited crops and foods

The world is struggling. The United Nations (UN) has calculated that the number of severely food insecure people had doubled in just two years.

There are now 276 million food-insecure people, with more than half a million experiencing famine. This is an increase of more than 500 per cent since 2016.

Calls to re-evaluate New Zealand’s stance on GE [gene editing] have also increased over recent years, with what some scientists hope is a game-changing report from the Productivity Commission appearing this year.

New Zealand firms: Reaching for the frontier, stated that a periodic review of regulatory regimes was good practice, “to ensure they remained fit for purpose, accommodated new technologies and did not stifle innovation”.

The Climate Change Commission made a similar recommendation in advice to government, and a new paper by fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Dr John Caradus reviews the literature on science and perception, concluding that New Zealand should be “regulating the benefit-risk issues associated with the end-product of genetic modification rather than the processes used in their development”.

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The bottom line must be the words from the UN – if we do not feed people, we feed conflict.

Scientists are doing everything they can to assist with improving food security and need all the tools available to assist.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here