A report released Jan. 23 by Save Our Seeds highlights the increasing use of “generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the development of genetically modified (GM) plants, raising significant new concerns about their safety.”
These developments come at a time when the European Union is considering a far-reaching deregulation of GM plants engineered with gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Under proposed EU rules now being drafted, most gene-edited plants would be able to bypass existing EU requirements for GM risk assessments, traceability and consumer labelling.
The proposed rules presume that developers are making only small genetic modifications and that these changes could also be achieved through conventional breeding. These assumptions have long been successfully disputed. With the rise of AI-driven genetic engineering, they have become even more questionable.
AI technologies now enable developers to even create so-called “new-to-nature” proteins and organisms which could pose previously unknown risks. If the EU moves forward with this deregulation, GM plants created by automated AI systems could enter the market without detection method, safety testing or consumer labelling, exposing EU citizens and the environment to previously unknown hazards.
Franziska Achterberg, head of policy and advocacy at Save Our Seeds, said, “The convergence of these two technologies amplifies the weaknesses of gene editing – such as unintended side effects – by adding known shortcomings of generative AI, including data distortions.
“Rather than dismantling essential safeguards, the EU should establish forward-thinking GMO regulations that strengthen its oversight and control of genetically engineered plants, addressing the new challenges arising from these technological developments.”
Reading between the lines, we get the message that gene-editing proponents are trying to convince regulatory authorities that edited genes are functionally different from genetic modification. But not everyone agrees that there is a functional distinction between gene-editing and genetic engineering.
One such dissenting individual is Claire Robinson, who works at GM Watch, a pro-consumer non-government organization which researches GM crops and foods. Her opinion – along with that of Michael Antoniou, Ph.D. in molecular genetics, is that any difference between the terms “gene-edited” and “genetic engineered” is nothing more than distinction based on semantics.
Robinson and Antoniou are firmly convinced that “resilient drought tolerance could be conferred by cross-breeding the naturally drought-tolerant soybeans available in the [Britain-based] Active Germ Plasm Bank, together with high performing varieties. Since genetic modification is known to reduce the yield of soybeans, these high performing varieties used for the crossbreeding would be non-GM. In fact, non-GM varieties of drought-tolerant soybeans have already been developed.”
They further state that crossbreeding utilizes whole gene families that work together in networks to create sustainable desirable traits. This compares to gene editing, which can only manipulate one or two genes at a time, meaning that the claimed drought tolerance may not prove durable in farmers’ fields in actual growing conditions.
Additionally, these two scientists stress that the deregulation of GM soy means that no safety testing will have been performed on it, meaning that it could contain novel toxins or allergens.
It’s almost certain that the researchers lobbying for the deregulation of GM soybeans didn’t want to embrace the crossbreeding option, because the result would likely not be patentable. GM organisms – with their inherent intellectual property – are far easier to patent. We’re talking about corporate dollar signs here.
Finally, resilient drought tolerance is achieved not primarily through genetics but by building healthy soil with lots of organic matter. Organic matter holds moisture and enables plants to survive drought conditions as well as prevents runoff and flooding in times of too much rain.
These two scientists are convinced that the underlying cause behind drought susceptibility is an environmental shortcoming, not a genetic imperfection that needs to be rectified.
What I find interesting is that the widespread adoption of modern biotechnology is so often accompanied by depletion of soil health supporting organic matter. This problem, which is rampant in the U.S., particularly the Mississippi Basin, is now increasingly universal in the Amazon Basin. The latter is mostly cropland that, not long ago, was tropical rainforest.
The resilience to moisture extremes – both too little and too much – is very much dependent on soil organic matter levels. So using gene editing (or outright GM organisms) to counter drought-related issues is more a matter of addressing the symptoms than the actual problems themselves. Referring back to this column’s title, if your house is too cold or too hot, it’s a good idea to close the window before adjusting the thermostat.
I think we can agree that organic matter depletion has become a very serious, very widespread (though infrequently addressed) issue. Modern biotechnology had enabled producers to injure soils and get away with such behavior – until they no longer can.
Part of what made the drought damage so severe in America’s Heartland almost three years ago was the extreme loss of soil organic matter. Such loss made the Mississippi Basin, which drains all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces, unable to store moisture for a non-rainy day. In writing about that horrible moisture shortage during the peak of Drought 2022, I mentioned that all three river branches in that basin – the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio – were seriously under-funded, water-wise. Losing three quarters of their original topsoil in the last 170 years means that the states of Iowa and Illinois have lost natural in-soil reservoir capacity equivalent to the water volumes of New York’s Cayuga and Seneca lakes.
There’s no way that soybean and corn genes can be edited or modified to counterbalance that level of drought drama.
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