Umeå University in northern Sweden claims credit for serving “a meal for the future:” CRISPRy-fried vegetables over tagliatelle, a type of flat pasta similar to fettucine. An Umeå researcher and a reporter from a Radio Sweden gardening show harvested the gene-edited cabbage that was used in cooking the meal for two.
“The CRISPR-plants in question grew in a pallet collar in a garden outside of Umeå in the north of Sweden and were neither particularly different nor nicer looking than anything else,” plant scientist Stefan Jansson said in a release. The university said the exercise of growing and cooking CRISPR-plants was “the first step towards a future where science can better provide farmers and consumers across the world with healthy, beautiful and hardy plants.”
Last November, the Swedish Board of Agriculture interpreted EU law to mean that gene editing was exempt from GMO regulation, because there was no transfer of DNA from another plant, the traditional definition of genetic modification. As a result, the university in the city of 111,000 people was the first to cultivate CRISPR-plants outside of a laboratory.
In April, U.S. officials reached a similar regulatory conclusion as the Swedes when a Penn State scientist used CRISPR technology to create a button mushroom that resists browning. Also in April, Dupont announced a high-starch “waxy” corn via CRISPR. The U.S. government is partway through modernizing genetic regulations to reflect the updated technology. Farm groups say gene editing should be exempt. A National Academy of Sciences report say the United States should conduct safety reviews of all new plant varieties that pose potential hazards, not just the products of genetic engineering.