30/March/22

 

A key change in rules notified on Wednesday will allow gene-edited plants without any “foreign” genes to be subjected to a weaker regulatory process than the one applied to other types of genetically engineered products — a move likely to add to a polarising debate around technologies such as CRISPR. A scientist working with GM technologies said the changes will exempt two categories of genome-edited products — in which genes are altered but not inserted from another organism — from being treated as transgenic products. [GMW: These are known as SDN-1 and SDN-2 plants in the EU.] Approved by the Union ministry of environment and forest on Wednesday, the changes follow recommendations from the department of biotechnology and the department of agriculture, research and education that “SDN-1 and SDN-2 genome-edited products free from exogenous introduced DNA be exempted from biosafety assessment". [GMW: For scientific explanations of the problems with this approach, see this, this, and this.] Hindustan Times

 

 

Maternal exposure to glyphosate-based herbicide in mice damages the muscles of their offspring and makes them fat, a new study by Brazilian researchers shows. [GMW: The researchers used unrealistically high doses, but these findings could be tested in experiments using realistic doses.] The Anatomical Record