Genome Editing

David Songstad, Director of Research/Cell Biology, Cibus, and Past President of The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), discusses an issue paper recently released by CAST in its series on The Need for Agricultural Innovation to Sustainably Feed the World by 2050. "GMO's have been around for 20 years and I'm not aware of a single instance where GMO's have had a negative impact on human health. None at all. There is a lot of concern and the public has a right to be concerned and from a science-based approach. There is no evidence that GMO's are hurting people in any way shape or form but yet there is that concern so I think what that means is that as scientists, we need to listen to those concerns and do a better job of communicating the safety aspects. Turning to genome editing, the advantages that it is not GMO. From a standpoint of either a knockout or a nucleotide substitution. Sec. of agriculture Sonny Perdue said earlier this year that he is not going to push for regulations on genome editing where it does not involve any plant pest. That includes knockouts and the nucleotide substitutions. The nucleotide substitution, mother nature does the very same thing. We call them snips. A single nucleotide polymorphism."