Australia set to reform genetic modification laws
SYDNEY: Australia is set to reform how it regulates new genetic engineering techniques, which experts say will help to dramatically speed up health and agriculture research.
The changes wi l l enable agricultural scientists to breed higher yielding crops faster and cheaper, or ones resistant to drought and disease, ABC News reported.
Australia’s gene technology regulator Dr Raj Bhula has proposed reducing regulations around gene editing techniques such as Crispr (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), following a 12- month technical review into the current regulations.
The most radical change put forward by the regulator is that some of the more efficient and newer genetic technologies, known as gene editing, would not be considered ‘genetic modification’.
“With gene editing you don’t always have to use genetic material from another organism, it is just editing the [ existing] material within the organism,” Dr Bhula said.
“All of our regulatory frameworks and laws have been established based on people putting unrelated genetic material into another organism. Whereas this process is just manipulation within the organism and not introducing anything foreign.”
Under current legislation, a genetically modified organism ( GMO) is broadly defined as an organism that has been modified by gene technology, and is subject to heavy regulation.
Genetically modified crops have been available for decades and some are already widely used in Australian agriculture, particularly cotton and canola.
GM cotton varieties, such as BT cotton, use the DNA from a common soil bacterium to repel insects.
Dr Bhula said the newer technologies, rather than inserting a foreign gene, involve editing an existing gene to speed up the development of an organism that would usually happen over time.
“If these technologies lead to outcomes no different to the processes people have been using for thousands of years, then there is no need to regulate them, because of their safe history of use,” she said.
“If there is no risk case to be made when using these new technologies, in terms of impact on the environment and safety for the environment, then there is a case for deregulation.”
If approved, the reforms will have wide ranging benef its for agriculture research, and could speed up the research and commercialisation of disease, salt or drought-resistant crops, or high yielding varieties.
The changes are currently open for consultation, and will ultimately need to be signed off by Commonwealth and state and territory governments, and passed in federal Parliament.
The change in regulation will also have big ramifications for the medical research sector, which Dr Bhula said had also been considered in the review.
“Under our regulatory scheme we have to look at protection of human health and protection of the environment,” she said.