Abstracts, Papers &

Resources

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Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingSustainability

Imagined futures for livestock gene editing: Public engagement in the Netherlands

Senna Middelveld, Phil Macnaghten, Franck Meijboom

Publication date: 01/08/2022

While gene editing is commonly represented as offering unbounded possibilities and societal benefit, it remains unclear how to characterise public views and the process through which responses are developed. Rather than simply being about individual attitudes, beliefs or preferences, we explicate an interpretative approach that seeks to understand how people make sense of the technology in the form of shared cultural idioms and stories. Based on five anticipatory focus group discussions with Dutch publics, we found the prevalence of five narratives shaping public talk, namely, technological fix, the market rules, in pursuit of perfection, finding the golden mean and governance through care. We explore the implications of these findings for governance and reflect on the virtues of sophrosyne and phronesis as offering ways to reconfigure the practice and politics of gene editing.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersConservationScience & Technology

Gene Drives in the UK, US, and Australian Press (2015–2019): How a New Focus on Responsibility Is Shaping Science Communication

Aleksandra Stelmach, Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley

Publication date: 25/01/2022

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Gene drive is a controversial biotechnology for pest control. Despite a commitment from gene drive researchers to responsibility and the key role of the media in debates about science and technology, little research has been conducted on media reporting of gene drive. We employ metaphor and discourse analysis to explore how responsibility is reflected in the coverage of this technology in the U.S., U.K., and Australian press. The findings reveal a rhetorical strategy of trust-building by evoking the moral attributes of gene drive researchers. We discuss the implications of these findings for the communication of new technologies.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationScience & TechnologySustainability

The complexity of the gene and the precision of CRISPR: What is the gene that is being edited?

Esha Shah, David Ludwig, Phil Macnaghten

Publication date: 26/10/2021

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This article argues that the polarization around the governance of gene editing partly reflects a failure of public engagement with the current state of research in genomics and postgenomics. CRISPR-based gene-editing technology has become embedded in a narrow narrative about the ease and precision of the technique that presents the gene as a stable object under technological control. This narrative fails to position the “ease of CRISPR-based editing” into the wider context of the “complexity of the gene.” While this strategic narrowness of CRISPR narratives aims to create public support for gene-editing technologies, we argue that it stands in the way of socially desirable anticipatory governance and open public dialogue about societal promises and the unintended consequences of gene editing. In addressing the polarization surrounding CRISPR-based editing technology, the article emphasizes the need for engagement with the complex state of postgenomic science that avoids strategic simplifications of the scientific literature in promoting or opposing the commercial use of the gene-editing technology.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingSustainability

How to Do What Is Right, Not What Is Easy: Requirements for Assessment of Genome-Edited and Genetically Modified Organisms under Ethical Guidelines

T. Antonsen, T. Dassler

Publication date: 24/06/2021

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An ethical assessment is a complex, dynamic and comprehensive process that requires both ethical expertise and practical knowledge. An ethical assessment of a genetically modified organism (GMO, including genome edited organisms) must follow accepted and transparent methods and be based in relevant considerations. In addition, the Ethical guidelines must include a broad and adequate range of values, so that no groups, stakeholders, agents or areas are left out.

We recommend that ethical assessments of GMOs (including genome-edited organisms) are performed by professionals with competence and practical knowledge of ethical judgements, and that users, non-users, stakeholders and interest groups are actively involved. In addition, we recommend that the Ethical guidelines include a wide range of ethical values.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Science & TechnologySustainability

Precision Technologies for Agriculture: Digital Farming, Gene-Edited Crops, and the Politics of Sustainability

Jennifer Clapp, Sarah-Louise Ruder

Publication date: 01/08/2020

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This article analyzes the rise of precision technologies for agriculture—specifically digital farming and plant genome editing—and their implications for the politics of environmental sustainability in the agrifood sector. We map out opposing views in the emerging debate over the environmental aspects of these technologies: while proponents see them as vital tools for environmental sustainability, critics view them as antithetical to their own agroecological vision of sustainable agriculture. We argue that key insights from the broader literature on the social effects of technological change—in particular, technological lock-in, the double-edged nature of technology, and uneven power relations—help to explain the political dynamics of this debate. Our analysis highlights the divergent perspectives regarding how these technologies interact with environmental problems, as well as the risks and opportunities they present. Yet, as we argue in the article, developments so far suggest that these dynamics are not always straightforward in practice.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingScience & TechnologySustainability

Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier

Maywa Montenegro de Wit

Publication date: 25/02/2020

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Many trends in agricultural biotechnology have extended fluidly from the first era of genetic modification using recombinant DNA techniques to the era of gene editing. But the high-profile, explicit, and assertive discourse of democratization with gene editing — especially CRISPR-Cas9 — is something new.

In this paper, I draw on semi-structured interviews with gene editors, policy analysts, and communications experts as well as with critical academic and civil society experts. I use Science and Technology Studies and political ecology lenses to unpack democratization in three main parts.

First is democratizing discourses: On what grounds is CRISPR said to be democratic? Who is saying so? How do dissident communities respond to these narratives? Second is agricultural applications, with a focus on the Innovative Genomics Institute’s work in developing gene-edited food crops, including a case of saveable clonal hybrid rice. Third is governance, where I contrast US Department of Agriculture regulations and the CRISPRcon conference as “closed” and “invited” spaces, respectively, for democratic participation.

Next, I argue that “created spaces,” in which power is held by typically delegitimized actors and ideas, offer an opening for working out democracy on the terrain of biotechnology. I conclude with a set of principles and practices for CRISPR governance based on the idea that democratization of biotechnology requires epistemic justice. By gathering multiple, partial knowledges together, we move beyond narrow risk-benefit framings to better evaluate not just what CRISPR is and does, but what democracy means and whom it serves.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

ConservationSustainability

Transferring the laboratory to the wild: An emerging era of environmental genetic engineering

Eva Sirinathsinghji

Publication date: 01/11/2019

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The last 30 years of commercialisation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have thus far been restricted to a limited number of species, predominantly maize and soy.

Developers are reacting to plateauing global adoption rates of these commercialised first-generation genetically engineered (GE) crops, which are plagued by declining trait efficacy and sustained market rejection, by reinvigorating efforts to usher in new crops and organisms.

New genetic engineering techniques such as genome editing and new delivery techniques have facilitated an emerging trend to genetically engineer organisms in the wild, moving the engineering process to agroecosystems and beyond, essentially converting the environment into the laboratory.

Previous techniques originally developed as research tools in contained-use settings, or for gene therapy in clinical settings, may be released into the environment to genetically engineer agricultural and wild organisms unchecked.

This briefing form the Third World Network summarises presents examples of research and applications.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

Legislation & Regulation

Brexit food safety legislation and potential implications for UK trade: the devil in the details

Lydgate E, Chloe Anthony C and Millstone E

Publication date: 31/10/2019

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This Briefing Paper from the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Chatham House examines an array of post-Brexit food safety legislation, covering pesticides, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), food additives and microbiological food safety.

The UK Government has committed itself to incorporating EU law unchanged as the starting point for the post-Brexit regulatory regime. However, EU institutions underpin UK food safety legislation to the extent that detaching UK law and policy making unavoidably constitutes major legislative reform. More concerningly, our analysis suggests that the UK’s post-Brexit food safety rules fall short of the level of protection currently provided by the EU: in some cases, they give ministers broad discretion to make future changes without equivalent scrutiny.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Legislation & Regulation

An overview of regulatory approaches to genome editing in agriculture

Friedrichs S et al

Publication date: 26/07/2019

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The “OECD Conference on Genome Editing: Applications in Agriculture – Implications for Health, Environment and Regulation”, brought together policy makers, academia, innovators and other stakeholders involved in the topic, in order to take stock of the existing research and applications of genome editing, and to thereby provide science-based input to the discussion of the potential impact of genome editing in the context of overarching agricultural and food policies.

The conference provided a timely opportunity for information exchange between scientific experts, risk assessors, policy makers, regulators, private sector innovators and other stakeholders from around the world.

In this paper, we summarise the conference session on the “Regulatory aspects” concerning genome editing (Session 3), during which government representatives from six different countries around the world reported on the policy frameworks pertaining to genome editing in their respective countries, and discussed their specificities, as well as the common issues encountered.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

Legislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingScience & Technology

European science community urges rethink on genome editing

John Innes Centre and 126 research institutions

Publication date: 25/07/2019

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Scientists from the John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory today joined colleagues from across Europe in calling for an urgent rethink of EU legislation on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).

An open statement signed by 126 research institutes says that scientists and plant breeders in the European Union should be enabled to use gene editing with CRISPR as a faster and more efficient way of producing food sustainably.

Aimed at the newly-elected European Parliament and European Commission, the statement comes one year to the day that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that plants obtained by modern forms of mutagenesis, of which gene-editing is an example, are not exempted from the EU GMO Directive.

Resource type: article: Web Page