Localizing CRISPR/Cas9? Re-Imagining Gene Editing as Tool for Small-Scale Agriculture in Bavaria

• In Event: Interrupting Innovation: Pausing to Examine New Biotechnologies - I

Abstract

Novel gene editing techniques such as the CRISPR/Cas9 system currently attract increasing public attention. Agriculture represents one important field of potential application of these new technologies. Historically, debates about the use of genetic engineering technologies in agriculture have been highly controversial – more controversial than debates about biomedical applications – particularly in European countries like Germany. The use of GMOs in agriculture in Germany is strictly regulated by law, basically amounting to ban on GMOs in agricultural production. Yet, the inception of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has revived hopes among genomics researchers in Germany that agricultural products generated with these new methods might be meet with a different legal and public response. In this talk, we explore how researchers in agricultural genomics in Germany, more specifically in the local context of Bavaria, reflect on the ‘failure’ of earlier genetic engineering technologies in agriculture to achieve public approval and how they construct the hows and whys of this failure. We trace how they, based on this understanding, attempt to forge different socio-technical paths for novel gene editing technologies. This specifically includes the formation of research plattforms with local stakeholders (e.g. local breeding associations) with the aim of developing gene editing tools and targets that have a fit with the needs and practices of local small scale agriculture. We show that this work of re-imagining genetic technologies in agricultures, involves, among other things, the repeated de- and reconstruction of dichotomies, among them, for example, the opposition of ‘organic’ and ‘genomics assisted’ agriculture.

Authors

• Julia Feiler, Technical University Munich (TUM)

• Ruth Müller, MCTS TU München

• Amy Louise Clare