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In a letter released to the public on [April 18], chemical giant DuPont Pioneer announced plans to market the first crop that uses a type of precise genetic modification called CRISPR-Cas9.
DuPont . . . wants to see the product — a hybrid type of corn — in farmers’ fields as early as 2021.
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The US Department of Agriculture has said that it will not subject the CRISPR corn to the same rules as traditional GMOs.
In response to Pioneer’s “Regulated Article Letter of Inquiry,” about the new product, the USDA said that it does not consider the CRISPR corn “as regulated by USDA Biotechnology Regulatory Services.”
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. . . [T]his approach is widely different from the one the USDA has previously taken with traditional GMOs, which are regulated by the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS keeps an eye on new genetically modified organisms that “may pose a risk to plant health.”
Related on the SLP
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At the center of the agency’s decision not to subject the new crop to its rules is the fact that the CRISPR-edited crops don’t contain any “introduced genetic material” or foreign DNA, and so would not be a threat to other plants.
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This could be the shape of things to come.
“If USDA decides the first product does not require regulation, that would definitely be encouraging for the many people already using CRISPR,” Joyce Van Eck, an assistant professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute, told the Genetic Expert News Service last week.
Read full, original post: The next generation of GMO food is here, and it’s technically not a GMO
