New GM techniques applied to animals: EFSA sees no risks

The Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty (EFSA) sees no new risks from the use of new genet­ic engi­neer­ing tech­niques on ani­mals. Its draft sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion is avail­able for com­ment until 19 March. Test­biotech has crit­i­cised the “wrong approach”.

In its 86-page draft on “syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy (Syn­Bio) and new genom­ic tech­niques (NGTs) applied to cur­rent or near-mar­ket ani­mals” EFSA’s GMO Pan­el makes a sim­i­lar argu­ment as on plants. It claims that “no new risks to humans, ani­mals, or the envi­ron­ment” arise so long as only exist­ing genes are changed and no for­eign genet­ic mate­r­i­al is intro­duced. Any off-tar­get effects are com­pa­ra­ble to the out­comes of con­ven­tion­al breed­ing, accord­ing to the EFSA Pan­el.

Test­biotech has crit­i­cised the draft: “NGT appli­ca­tions in ani­mals are like­ly to involve both spe­cif­ic risks and addi­tion­al ani­mal suf­fer­ing in com­par­i­son to con­ven­tion­al ani­mal breed­ing,” the organ­i­sa­tion states in a press release. While plants can have a rel­a­tive­ly high tol­er­ance thresh­old for muta­tions, this does not apply to ani­mals where small changes could trig­ger seri­ous dis­eases such as can­cer, accord­ing to Test­biotech.

For more infor­ma­tion, see Infor­ma­tions­di­enst Gen­tech­nik