Societies comment on EPA rule on gene editing in plants

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA responded to a request for comments from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding regulatory exemptions proposed for certain plants created using gene-editing technologies. EPA’s proposed rule was decades in the making and was written to complement USDA’s recent rule on the matter. The Societies’ comments touched on EPA’s metabolite reporting and record-keeping requirements, which will disproportionately fall on smaller developers and developers of specialty crops, its treatment of gene-edited varieties in which no pesticide is produced, and its definitions of conventional breeding and native genes. The Crop Science Society of America also signed on to a coalition letter with similar comments.