Viewpoint: UK's organic farming lobby needs to drop its ideological rejection of gene editing if it hopes to remain viable
In July this year, the European Commission published its proposals for regulating plants developed using new genomic techniques (NGTs) such as CRISPR gene editing.This followed a report published by the Commission in April 2021, reviewing the impacts of a July 2018 ruling by the European Court of Justice that all NGT plants should be regulated in the EU as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).The Commission’s review determined that the EU’s 20-year-old regulatory framework for GMOs was not fit-for-purpose to deal with more recent breeding technologies such as gene editing. It also advised...