Rapid advances in the science of genetic modification (GM) could be leaving regulators behind with existing EU laws unable to govern their use, it has emerged.
Speaking at a debate on GM in London last week, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Food Science & Technology, James Dunwell, professor of plant biology at the University of Reading, outlined a number of recent scientific developments where there were serious regulatory issues to be resolved.
Dunwell posed the question of the relevance of existing definitions of GM to these new technologies. “Will we be able to work with these definitions going forward?” he asked, for emerging technologies, such as ‘reverse breeding’ using GM methods where hybrid plants were “deconstructed” and then reconstructed in ways where it was not possible to detect the use of GM.
“Is the regulation that we have at the present time fit for purpose in terms of the science that is going forward faster than any of us can imagine?” he asked. “There are companies developing technologies that will really force the regulators to take a good hard look at the core principles on which the regulation of GM is based.”
He cited other technologies, such as agroinoculation - a temporary system to produce novel proteins in crops - and ‘epigenetics’, which is to do with changes in the ways genes express themselves, where the existing definitions might be equally inappropriate.
In some cases, said Dunwell, non-GM vines are being grafted onto GM vine root stocks to protect against damaging fungal diseases in the soil. “So how does that fit in?” he asked. Or with processes such as ‘directed mutation’, where he claimed the product was indistinguishable from conventional materials.
“Many of the things I have described could not be detected by any DNA test,” he said. However, because of the way the science was developing, Dunwell argued there were also questions about whether some should even be described as GM or not, which further complicated the regulators’ role.