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The new regulations would be that there is no reporting required if the modifications could have occurred naturally--but who is responsible for that determination?


Deletion of a Gene -> Very high likelihood of occurring naturally

Duplication of a Gene -> Very high likelihood of occurring naturally

Insertion of a Gene from same species (e.g. from another strain) -> High likelihood of occurring naturally

Insertion of a Gene from an unrelated species -> Low likelihood of occurring naturally


My thoughts exactly.

This seems like a very slippery slope.

Who can say for sure that editing the genome of a plant in a certain way could mimic selective breeding?


That's actually pretty easy to tell.

Simply deleting or duplicating genes is entirely natural. Any CRISPR mutation achieved through merely duplicating or deleting sequences is therefore also achievable through selective breeding.

Transferring genes from one strain of a species to another while the two species can interbreed is also very clearly natural.

The above but if the interbreeding process requires artificial help would be more of a slippery slope but in theory you could still do selective breeding in that case.

Transferring a gene from a potato to a strawberry would not be achievable by selectively breeding the two (purely because those two can't interbreed at all in this example).




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