The Ministry is open to genetic modification in agriculture

Minister Carola Schouten (Agriculture, Christian Union) is open to the application of genetic modification to Dutch agriculture. This was confirmed by his spokesman in response to the media coverage of of Volkskrant .

The Minister is particularly interested in the application of the new CRISPR-Cas technology to what they view as a mild form of "genetics" in the Volkskrant. change in agriculture. "The ministry is committed to cooperating with a survey conducted by farmers, enterprises and the University of Wageningen.Based on the scientific findings, the Ministry is examining the possibilities In the matter of legislation and regulation, incidentally, the government had already included in the government agreement that it wanted to engage in technology.

CRISPR-Case allows, according to the terms of the University, "to modify the hereditary material of viruses, bacteria, cells, plants and animals in a relatively simple, very precise and effective manner."

British Ethicist The door is open to CRISPR-case, but genetic engineering can cause pathogenic mutations

"Faster and More Effective"

This technique brings genetic modifications to DNA or adds entirely new genetic information CRISPR-Cas is particularly fast and accurate than current techniques, say Wageningen researchers. A letter to Parliament will be sent on the state of progress of the CRISPR-case investigation. This will follow in the coming weeks. We will see clearly how the minister can fulfill her wish.

At the present time, a judgment of the European Court of Justice is still an obstacle. This includes a number of new treatment techniques, including CRISPR-Cas, this summer in genetic modification. This is subject to strict regulation in Europe for the moment. Spokesperson Rudi Buis: "You may be wondering if Crispr-Cas is a genetic modification, but we would like to experiment." He promised that the minister would tackle the issue in Europe, in the hope an exception can be made for CRISPR-Case. "We can not ignore the court's decision, but we want to see what space is around her."

Also listen to the episode of our Unblown Monkeys podcast about CRISPR-case: