A Scientific Revolution in the European Union? The approval of New Genomic Technologies for plant science and breeding

Something quite dramatic happened in the EU in December last year. The European Parliament, after decades of political wrangling, decided to approve certain forms of genetic engineering (NGT1 – New Genomic Technologies Type 1 – typically gene editing using CRISPR/Cas9, but excluding transgenic technologies, popularly known as “GMO”), which likely opens the door to the use of gene editing for creating new agricultural crops in the EU. So far it seems that the EU is keen not to follow in the footsteps of the US in allowing this to become primarily a playing field for a few large transnational corporations. The EU seems to want to control/direct the use of the new technologies towards more public goods than private goods. There are now a myriad of interesting scientific/political/economic/ environmental/ethical issues that should be subject to scientific inquiry. We hope this meeting could spur some interesting new research initiatives across faculties and disciplines.  

Preliminary programme

12:00 – 13:00 Light lunch is served 

13:00 – 13:10 Welcome and short round of presentation of participants 

13:10 – 13:30 Agriculture in the Anthropocene: challenges and struggles over the research agenda?

• Lennart Olsson, LUCSUS) 

13:30 – 14:10 Introduction for laypeople to genetic technologies for plant breeding

• Michael Palmgren, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen) 

14:10 – 14:50 Business and legal considerations of changing EU legislation on genomic technologies

• Peter Gottschalk, Dept. of Business Law, LU) 

14:50 – 15:10 Coffee/tea 

15:10 – 15:40 Seeds for food – implications for alternative models of seed and knowledge exchange

• Wim Carton and Michaelin Sibanda, LUCSUS) 

15:40 – 15:50 Organisation of discussion groups and questions 

15:50 – 16:45 Discussion in breakout groups 

16:45 – 17:00 Summing up, ideas for future research initiatives   

Useful information  

"New genomic techniques: deal to support the green transition in farming", press release by the European Parliament

"EU paves way for more designer plants", Politico

"European Parliament votes to ease regulation of gene-edited crops", Science

Registration

• Please register by clicking the link: https://survey.mailing.lu.se/Survey/62495
• Seats are limited to 40 on a first come first served basis.
• Registration deadline: 20 February at 13:00.

Organised by: The PERENNIAL project