FDA Opens Floodgates to Gen2 Frankenfoods
The agency has released “guidance” to the biotech industry about how to get foods from gene-edited (GE) plants onto your dinner plate, doubling down on bad policies that treat GE foods the same as any other type of food—even though they are anything but.
April 4, 2024 | Source: Alliance for Natural Health
Does it matter to you how the food you eat and feed your family is produced? Most of us who care about our health or that of our loved ones, or know something about nutrition and molecular biology, would say “yes.” But, for the FDA, it doesn’t matter what’s happened to your food on its way to your dinner plate. That’s the thrust of the new guidance document released by the agency on foods from GE plants. All that matters to the FDA is the finished product. This means a GE tomato gets to be treated, in regulatory terms, exactly the same way as a regular tomato. No additional safety measures are necessary for GE fruits and vegetables because the process used to create them, says the FDA, is irrelevant. We have to push back against this short-sighted, unscientific, pro-industry stance taken by the federal government. Just think about the influx of synbio foods that are coming to market, thanks to the fact that the FDA has effectively said to industry that it’s ‘game on’ for GE foods, and you don’t need to worry about any additional safety hurdles or labeling.
The guidance spells out the FDA’s logic—or lack thereof—on this issue. In its view, the FDA sees no reason to revise its 1992 new plant variety (NPV) policy that was developed for GMO plants, decades before the arrival of genetic engineering techniques like CRISPR. It argues that plant breeders have tinkered with plant genetics to produce new plant varieties for a long time, and very rarely has a new plant variety been the source of food safety concerns. The agency seems very bullish indeed on gene-editing:
Because genome editing techniques allow for greater control over the site of a genetic modification, new plant varieties produced using genome editing can produce foods with characteristics similar to or even identical to foods from traditionally-bred plants; thus, food from these genome-edited varieties may have the same characteristics as foods from traditionally-bred plants that have been safely consumed in the past.