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What are your views on genome editing our food?

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I report on the Swiss pharmaceutical industry and healthcare topics such as access to medicine, biomedical innovation, and the impact of diseases like cancer. I grew up just outside San Francisco and studied international affairs with a focus on development economics and healthcare policy. Prior to joining SWI swissinfo.ch in 2018, I was a freelance journalist and a researcher on business and human rights.

Genome editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 are being tabled as a way to feed the planet under mounting stress from climate change. This has provoked strong views for and against the idea.

Some argue the technology is just speeding up what already happens in nature or through conventional breeding methods and could help develop vegetables and other crops that can deal with pests and the effects of climate change. Others argue it poses risks to human health and the environment and can be used to produce GMOs where foreign DNA is inserted into a plant species. They also worry that these technologies will put more of the food system in the hands of big agribusiness.

Governments, including in Switzerland, are currently considering how, if at all, to regulate genome editing in plants.

What do you think about the technology and how should it be regulated?

From the article Explainer: the controversy behind genome editing our food

From the article Genome editing’s patent problem fuels concern for the future of food

Join the conversation!

Contributions must adhere to our guidelines. If you have questions or wish to suggest other ideas for debates, please, get in touch!
Josh G
Josh G

The issue I see with manipulating one part of nature is that it will change the way that part relates to the rest of an ecosystem, potentially throwing it out of balance. I am not opposed to making better food (it is up for discussion on whether it is healthier or not), but more the effects that it will have on the rest of the ecosystem, or the effects that the ecosystem will have on it.

kkckkc
kkckkc

Its not an absolute science. It's iterative and because of this we should NOT use crispr in situations where subsequent generations carry edited genes. there are simply too many unintended consequences.

although crispr may or may not ave been used for the covid virus, it is clear that the original natural virus was manipulated to add "gain of function" and we all experienced the effects.

AliGü
AliGü

https://scitechdaily.com/decade-long-study-challenges-traditional-views-of-evolution/
Their findings, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), rely on a decade of research. Using advanced genomic techniques, the research team analyzed DNA samples from nearly 1,000 Daphnia.

They discovered that the strength of natural selection on individual genes varies significantly from year to year, maintaining variation and potentially enhancing the ability to adapt to future changing environmental conditions by providing raw material for natural selection to act on.

Also, Nature Magazine https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-024-01752-4 on 8 July published Environmentally dependent interactions shape patterns in gene content across natural microbiomes

Both of these research projects support my comments below.

AliGü
AliGü

Latest biochemical research indicates that genetic chemistry inside an organism ( ex Daphnia water fleas) resonate and exchange biochemical information with environmental influences. This new research implies that genes are more like footprints than building blocks. It seems to me that genes indicate the biochemical " experience" of an organism. As such it seems irresponsible to manipulate genes at all.

James Allen
James Allen

In Switzerland we have a moratorium in place since 2005 that effectively bans GM crops, a position which is effectively aligned with that in the EU. The original GM methods to introduce foreign DNA into crop plant genomes used crude techniques resulting in crops that did contain foreign DNA. Contrary to the EU and Switzerland, USA and Canada and some other countries have adopted GM crops so that today more than 90% of all soya, maize, cotton and sugar beet grown in the US is GM. The original concern by environmentalists was that GM was an unnatural method, and the resultant crops posed a risk of horizontal gene transfer into other organisms and was a potential health risk to humans. However, in the 30 years since their first introduction and despite billions of hectares of GM crops being grown worldwide there is no evidence any of these fears having occurred. Now with the advent of NGT (New Genomic Techniques) such as CRISPR/cas-9, crop genes can be precisely targeted without the insertion of foreign DNA. In fact, NGT resembles traditional plant breeding practised by humanity for thousands of years, except being much faster and efficient. Therefore, scientifically there is little valid basis for maintaining a moratorium in Switzerland against new crop varieties developed using NGT. This has been recognised in the EU and a new law has been drafted differentiating NGT from GM crops and on which discussion is ongoing. Given the potentially huge benefits to farmers and consumers in adopting crop varieties improved by NGT, Parliament in Switzerland also see the need to reconsider maintaining a blanket moratorium which is outdated and excessively precautionary and based on unrealised risks. Whether the Swiss will agree to lift the moratorium however remains to be seen.

AliGü
AliGü
@James Allen

Ah, so you have not heard of Mom's Across America.?? This is a club of mother's who discovered that when their normally born children ate normally grown food inside the USA ( most normally grown conventioal farming is now grown with genetically modified glyphosat resistent crops) ..that their children developed sy.ptoms of autism!! Which subsequently healed on diets of 100% organic, biologically grown food.

ProperD
ProperD

Leave our food alone. There's no excuse.....this isn't necessary. People have been farming for centuries without genetically modifying food. And we had much healthier food than what we have today.

Richard Higgins
Richard Higgins

The whole modern approach to pest and disease prevention is misdirected. There is actually no need for any pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, GM technology or Genome technology in order to grow the best nutrient rich super tasting food.

we have been doing this for the last 30 years with our HH- technology. check it out here. http://www.ggi.org.uk

Lesley Struchen
Lesley Struchen
The following contribution has been automatically translated from DE.

Currently, the same EU law applies to new and old genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This provides for risk assessment, clear labeling and traceability of GMOs placed on the market. But the European Commission intends to exclude GMOs produced by new genetic modification (NGM) techniques from existing GMO legislation. If the proposed deregulation is implemented, it will eliminate risk assessments, traceability and labeling requirements for about 95% of all NGV plants currently in the development pipeline. This would be an elegant solution to the fact that GM food is rejected by consumers. Without labeling, no one knows what is in our food. The powerful seed and chemical companies can therefore look forward to even greater profits.

Aktuell gilt für neue und alte gentechnisch veränderte Organismen (GVO) das gleiche EU-Recht. Dieses sieht eine Risikoprüfung, eine klare Kennzeichnung sowie die Rückverfolgbarkeit der in Verkehr gebrachten GVO vor. Aber die Europäische Kommission beabsichtigt, GVO, die durch neue gentechnische Verfahren (NGV) erzeugt werden, von der bestehenden GVO-Gesetzgebung auszuklammern. Wird die geplante Deregulierung umgesetzt, entfallen die Risikobewertungen, Rückverfolgbarkeits- und Kennzeichnungsvorschriften für etwa 95 % aller NGV-Pflanzen, die sich derzeit in der Entwicklungspipeline befinden. Damit liesse sich der Umstand, dass Gen-Food von den Konsument:innen abgelehnt wird, auf elegante Weise lösen. Denn ohne Deklarierung weiss niemand mehr, was in unseren Lebensmitteln steckt. Die mächtigen Saatgut- und Chemieunternehmen blicken also noch grösseren Gewinnen entgegen.

AliGü
AliGü
@Lesley Struchen

Compared to the USA ( I grew up in NYC) Swiss culture distinguishes between every form of cultural value. Why jeopardize such diversity by introducing an expensive, questionable technology that will either lead to gross standardizations of nutritional quality or complete chaos in time tested scientific nomenclature?? Genetic manipulation is like taking books out of a library, and tearing pages out of the books..to paste into specific places into other books. I hope Swiss politicians are wiser than American.

曠野洋一
曠野洋一
The following contribution has been automatically translated from JA.

In Japan, we have increased the number of plants that can be eaten by humans by means of breeding.
I think genome editing is changing things to suit business. I think this is dangerous.

日本では、品種改良という方法で、人間が食べられる植物を増やしていきました。
ゲノム編集は、商売に都合のいいように変えているように思います。これは危険だと思います。

Steven
Steven

CRISPR is not necessarily fastest, safest, or most economically nor ecologically sensible.

The data on CRISPR’s potential for seed breeding mustn't obscure four key points.

1. Recent methods and technologies such as speed breeding mean that it is possible to cycle through six generations a year in a glasshouse and use genomic selection to pick out the good lines without field testing if you have enough trials to make a prediction from previous years. 
Breeding a heterogeneous population would be even faster.

2. Our digestive systems and our immune systems are the result of evolutionary processes that occurred alongside evolutionary processes across the whole of our planet’s ecological systems. 

Food is clearly intrinsic to the health of our digestive systems and our immune systems and ignoring evolutionary processes is potentially highly destructive and threatens our health and the health of the ecosystems we rely on.

3. Consolidation in agribusiness over recent decades has led to a very few businesses controlling the Intellectual Property of much of the seed varieties large scale food systems depend upon.
CRISPR techniques potentially lead to a very high level of patenting in our food systems. This is likely to continue the consolidation process.

Consolidation while seemingly offering apparent economies of scale are also driving more reliance on agrochemical use. Crop variety IPs are often owned by the agribusinesses who also copyright agrochemicals). Agrochemicals are proven to cause ecological degradation and increase production and emission of GHGs (from production and use of ammonium nitrate right through to production and use of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and more besides).


As an aside, so-called ‘economies of scale are largely false. Consolidation is in many ways proof that these business are loss generating. They survive only by attracting new investment through purchasing, and asset stripping including cutting cost by disabling human agency in those businesses.

4. We need greater nourishment, better distribution and more equality in our food systems, not more volume. 

According to the FAO if food waste was a country it’d be the third highest emitter of GHG on the planet. 

Around a billion people are hungry today, and two billion are overweight. 


And we’ve had this knowledge of these deep and terrible flaws in our food systems for some years now. 


Many have called for positive change and yet the change we need does not come. Sadly, reports show that the reason for industry and policy inertia is the action of vested interests.

CRISPR needs to be performed under well-regulated frameworks and needs high levels of scrutiny across supply chains.

Food needs to be taken as a nourishment for people and for ecologies, not simply a marketing commodity.

Failure to address the above points threatens our ability to successfully meet the challenges presented to us today from the dual crises of the climate and nature emergencies.

Juan Carlos Gamero Trujillano
Juan Carlos Gamero Trujillano
@Steven

Hello Steven. Answering one by one:

1. Speed breeding it's actually a good way to improve the time we spend on breeding. But its not an alternative (as you propose) but a new sistem we would use. When you make a new plant GMO or by selective breeding, one big problem it's that you need at least 6-7 (obviously GMOs are faster). It has to be a new way to make it faster, not an alternative.

2. Our digestive systems and our immune systems are the result of evolutionary processes that occurred alongside evolutionary processes, of course. But when you use CRISPR to modify a plaant, you're not changing evolution. You are just make what you could do in decades in a few years. If you have in one hand a big tomato and in another hand a tomato that taste nice, you could croos them and spend years until you have the tomato you wanted; or you could look for the responsible gene and make a the same tomato including ONLY the characteristic you were looking for.

3. Actually, the graphic use to show how Intellectual Property it's being controlled by a few enterprises shows that the two institutions with the most patents are public.

4. The big problem about nourishment it's precisely the distribution due to vegetables does not resist the time or conditions during transport. And the best way to make a vegetable, fruit or whatever you want resistant to that, it's by CRISPR. As I said before, you could do it by conventional way, but you would spend much more time for having the same product or even a worst product (because same way you introduce the characteristic you wanted you could introduce some you didn't.

CRISPR it's the future. It's the best and fastest way we have. It's safe, because 1. the CRISPR system only works to do the genetic transformation, then it's eliminated by the cell. 2. our digestive systems does not incorporate DNA, so eating a tomato edited by CRISPR or by conventional cross, has no diference. 3. CRISPR it's being used in gene therapy in HUMANS, with very good results. I don't think you or anyone would reject a solution for a genetic illness. Or insuline, that it's produced on GMO bacteria.

Same way you probably don't see the problem on those cases (because there is not a problem), you shouldn't see the problem on modify plants.

Sorry for my english, I haven't use it in a while. If you have some doubt or want to discuss, here I am.

Anonymous
Anonymous
The following contribution has been automatically translated from IT.

Doesn't anyone wonder why we have an obesity emergency in all the most advanced countries? Is it because of all the hormones and substances we feed to animals to make them fat? Now we want to alter their DNA? It does not seem like a good idea. Genetics is a science in its infancy. We don't really know what this would mean for us who eat them.

Let's go back to eating natural, traditionally prepared food and we'll all be better off.

Nessuno si chiede per quale motivo abbiamo un'emergenza obesità in tutti i paesi piu' avanzati? Non sarà mica per tutti gli ormoni e le sostanze che diamo da mangiare agli animali per farli ingrassare? Adesso vogliamo pure alterarne il DNA? Non mi sembra una buona idea. La genetica e' una scienza agli albori. Di fatto non sappiamo cosa questo comporterebbe per noi che li mangiamo.

Torniamo a mangiare cibo naturale, preparato secondo tradizione e staremo tutti meglio.

Suze
Suze

GM food, vertical farming, lab grown meat, fall in fresh food grown and grazed outdoors in fields … great leaves far more land and green space available for the continuing development of housing and further rapid urban spread to accommodate the growing world population.!

What happens then, if the world population dramatically shrinks through risks associated with poorer nutrition leading to a large reduction in birth rate and life expectancy and many other causes such as epidemics, pandemics and wars and if all of the housing and concrete jungles become superfluous..

Rick Goodman
Rick Goodman

What do we each consume every day? The same food? What is different for many things? A number of genes, proteins, vitamins and lipids. Each time you eat a tomato do you think it is nutritionally good and equal to the one you ate last month? Is corn or beans or peanut the same as you ate last year?
What are the differences and why? Does it matter for nutrition or risk? Probably not. If you are eating a good mixed diet, is it vegan or meat? should you have a lot of diversity? Who is at risk and why from the alterations? If you are allergic to tomato, you should not eat tomatoes. If you are allergic to peanut, you should not eat peanuts. Are there some differences in the expression and concentration of allergens across peanut harvests or varieties? Yes, but most of us will never know or care. If you are allergic to peanut allergen Ara h 2, you should avoid all peanuts. Some may have low expression of Ara h 2, but you cannot be sure. If you are not allergic to peanuts, it does not matter.
The genes can be changed by plant breeding, or by infection with certain plant viruses. Once the genes are changed, they will generally breed true, unless you cross-breed them. Can fertilizers make a difference? Maybe, but usually it is for whole protein mixes or other components of a crop. I have spent ~ 25 years on safety evaluation of GM crops and novel food organisms. The changes by gene editing are not worse than natural mutagensis, or breeding across outbred populations of plants. The target of changes is what matters. Introducing a new gene that encodes a peanut allergen would be bad if it is put in rice. Because rice cannot be labeled.
Please do not act so suspicious of food safety that you are afraid to eat. If you have food allergies or celiac disease, or diabetes, you need to be careful of what you eat. Otherwise, eat a varied diet.

Anonymous
Anonymous

As a retired person I finally can say that this food thing is all garbage cooked up by corrupted people.
When I was a teenager there was starving masses and we still have them... I over eat. Portions in restaurants are usually big and it is worse in Germany.
My homeland serves up big amounts of meat etc.,

To me at my age I think it is a scam that there is not enough food on this planet.
My brother used to clear away, his business, the containers behind restaurants and was shocked at the waste of food and that was thirty years ago.

I am against GMO food but I am FOR labelling. Not enough information on labels.

It is 2022 and we are being pushed in digital ?? and yet we still cannot label food enough in my opinion.

Crystal
Crystal

genetically manipulated food will result in deficiency diseases. The food that we eat contains a multitude of natural chemicals, many needed by the body. These natural chemicals will not be present in genetically produced food.

aussie43
aussie43

If we start engineering our food, how long before we start engineering ourselves?

As Frank below points out, we waste 17% of our food. Many countries have very low productivity of farming. Many countries are overfed. Their citizens are overweight and unhealthy as a result. Some countries have tracts of agricultural land unused due to shortages of workers in agriculture.

There is a scope to improve and to increase food production without resorting to genetic engineering.

I am close to 80, and I remember eating only sweet strawberries when I was a kid.
Strawberries have to be picked when ripe., not when it suits the logistics of transporting them over a continent, or to another continent.
The same goes for lots of other farm products.

In developed countries who claim to be wealthy, food has to be cheap. The emphasis is on quantity.
This has to change. People should eat less and better quality, as nature intended.

As an absolute minimum, all GM food should be properly labelled so consumers have choice.

Jessica Davis Plüss
Jessica Davis Plüss SWI SWISSINFO.CH
@aussie43

Thank you very much for your thoughts. It is amazing how different strawberries taste when they are picked ripe than eaten out of a plastic package shipped across the world. It does seem that the debate on genome editing should be in the broader context of the way we eat/consume rather than simply on the technology. Thanks again for sharing.

kevsbored
kevsbored

Since the dawn of time, man has contended with those who oppose change or allow lack of knowledge to breed fear and resistance.

Isabelle Bannerman
Isabelle Bannerman SWI SWISSINFO.CH
@kevsbored

Hi, where do you see breeding fear and resistance in the discussion about genome editing our food? Do you think genome editing food is a good way to combat problems with feeding the world? Or do you disagree? Why?

We do appreciate all comments that contribute to a constructive discussion.

Crystal
Crystal
@kevsbored

Genetically produced food will lack the diversity of natural chemicals needed by the body resulting in deficiency diseases.

makssiem
makssiem
The following contribution has been automatically translated from AR.

Why are human genes not modified to stop multiple childbearing and keep the state of the Earth intact as developed by nature?

لماذا لا يتم تعديل جينات الانسان ليتوقف عن الانجاب المضاعف ويبقي حال الارض على حاله كما طورته الطبيعة .

Frank-11
Frank-11

We don't need GMO or artificial food, insects, etc.
We are already wasting a massive 17% of food, at least. In total this food waste is responsible for 6% of our CO2 emissions, yet it's ignored, whereas in comparison everyone seems to be panicking about aviation emissions which are just 1% !

Rafiq Tschannen
Rafiq Tschannen

Let's be honest. This is getting a bit too complicated for the ordinary folks (like me). Let's just hope the scientists will find ways to feed the planet in future and not be hindered by bureaucrats on the one hand and greed on the other.

Isabelle Bannerman
Isabelle Bannerman SWI SWISSINFO.CH
@Rafiq Tschannen

I agree this topic is complicated. I found the explainer very helpful. Or where does it get too complicated in your eyes?

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/explainer--the-controversy-behind-genome-editing-our-food/47288954

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR