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By Editing Plant Genes, Companies Avoid Regulation
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: January 19th, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/business/energy-environmen...
Its first attempt to develop genetically engineered grass ended disastrously for the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. The grass escaped into the wild from test plots in Oregon in 2003. Yet Scotts is once again developing genetically modified grass that would ... be resistant to damage from the popular weedkiller Roundup. But this time the grass will not need federal approval before it can be field-tested and marketed. Scotts and several other companies are developing genetically modified crops using techniques that either are outside the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department or use new methods like genome editing that were not envisioned when the regulations were created. If you take genetic material from a plant ... theres a bunch of stuff you can do that at least technically is unregulated, Jim Hagedorn, Scotts chief executive, told analysts in December 2013. Other companies, including Cellectis, are using new genome-editing techniques that can change the plants existing DNA rather than insert foreign genes. Cibus, a privately held San Diego company, is beginning to sell herbicide-resistant canola developed this way. With our technology, we can develop the same traits but in a way thats not transgenic, said Peter Beetham, chief executive of Cibus, using a term for a plant containing foreign genes. Regulators around the world are now grappling with whether these techniques are even considered genetic engineering and how, if at all, they should be regulated.
Note: Scotts is Monsanto's exclusive agent for consumer RoundUp. They are trying to engineer plants to be more resistant to RoundUp's toxicity, so that greater quantities of this deadly poison can be dumped on our lawns and food crops. It remains impossible to contain the spread of transgenetic material that escaped a Scotts Miracle-Gro Company lab in 2003. For more, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles.
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