Life Sciences Sub-Chapter Afternoon Virtual Presentation

New Breeding Techniques and Genetically Modified Organism Regulation in South Africa

On 17 March 2022, the LES South Africa Life Sciences sub-committee hosted a virtual presentation on a very topical subject, entitled New Breeding Techniques and Genetically Modified Organism regulation in South Africa by Dr Hennie Groenewald.  Dr Groenewald is the Executive Manager of Biosafety South Africa, a national service platform that facilitates sustainable bio-innovation.  In particular, the presentation explored the application of the South African Genetically Modified Organisms Act (GMO Act) in relation to new breeding techniques or “NBTs” including the many now popular, and commonly used tools for genome editing, including clustered regularly-interspersed short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and the like.  Regulation of organisms created through NBTs and characterisation of such organisms or products derived from them, creates difficulties in that since such organisms do not necessarily incorporate genetic material from another organism in their genome, it can be extremely difficult to determine whether organisms were created by conventional breeding or random mutation, or that the organisms were indeed created through NBTs.  In this presentation, Dr Groenewald considered the present requirements and examined some of the current discussions relating to regulation of NBTs in terms of the GMO Act.  

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