Centre to allow genetic editing

In a step that could pave the way for quick approval of highly nutritious and pest-resistant ‘gene edited’ products, the ministry of science and technology on Friday exempted genetic editing proc-ess from the regulatory regime.

If the amendment comes into force, food products, like waxy corn and non-browning mushroom, made using CRISPR — a promising gene-editing technique — could be sold and eaten in India like in the US.

Currently the law in India regulates process of genetic manipulation (be it gene editing or gene modification) and its products.

The policy leading to an amendment of the environment law will help in distinguishing the genetically-modified organism (GMO) crops that are usually transgenic like BT cotton, BT Brinjal with that of Gene Edited crops like waxy corn, Non browning mushroom which doesn’t have any foreign gene.

Dr S.R. Rao, adviser of biotechnology, science and technology department said, “The government takes the Science Congress as an opportunity to announce a new policy. After consultation with different bodies, we will finalise it in next to six to seven months,”

“Many bodies like the National Science Foundation of the US and the Chinese Science Academy and many other countries’ regulatory bodies are looking at new risk or old risk about these technologies. They found that these new technologies like CRISPR-Cas are more precise than earlier technologies.”

He said major countries across the world are relaxing regulations so that products may be brought into the market in within four years instead of ten years.

India has decided to follow Argentina and the US, where product is regulated and not the process.

“The Environmental Protection Act 1986 regulates deletion, mutation, addition and insertion of genes. It means everything is regulated irrespective of the process. There are a series of bodies and mechanism. It is not only time-taking but also costly to produce data file. In the case of BT Cotton, it costs `5 crore to `10 crore only for the data generation,” Mr Rao said.

Genome-edited crops are generated through precise editing of an organism’s native genome without any foreign sequence.