Current legislation hinders research on climate-resilient plants and could damage European competitiveness, they warn
Two high-profile German science institutions have proposed an amendment to European genetic engineering law in order to loosen the bloc’s strict regulations on research into genetically modified organisms.
The proposal suggests that genome-edited organisms whose genome does not contain any foreign genetic information or a combination of genetic materials should be excluded from the law. This would include combinations of genetic material that could arise naturally or through conventional breeding techniques, according to a policy paper by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany’s largest public research funder.