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Sep 29, 2016

GMO animals could scramble environmental politics, industry says

Genetically modified livestock and wildlife are quickly becoming a non-theoretical reality, according to the biotechnology industry, and their impending movement out of the lab and into the world has the potential to scramble environmental politics. Green groups that now have an almost reflexive opposition to GM plants will soon have to decide how to respond to genetically modified animals that can help them achieve their goals, such as conservation or reducing animal cruelty. The impending commercialization of these animals must be handled carefully, though, to avoid worsening the existing stigma attached to the industry, speakers at a biotechnology conference in Bethesda, Md., said. “If we don’t pay attention to this we run the risk of doing the exact same things wrong that happened in the early stages of the introduction of [genetically modified organisms] into the plant world,” Ryan Phelan, the co-founder of a start up that’s trying to use genetic engineering to rescue endangered and extinct species, said. Read the article.