It can be very hard to keep up, even for those following closely. Hardly a day goes by without new reports of advances in gene editing. Note: This timeline was last updated on March 10, 2020. Senior Fellow, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation For example, Japan, which has no commercialized GMOs, is emerging as a leader in the introduction of gene edited crops. How this will effect gene editing regulations is also unclear. It’s somewhat true that countries with product-based regulation have more crops approved and the approval process is more streamlined, but there are contradictions. For example, Brazil and Argentina have emerged as GMO super powers using different regulatory concepts, while there is no GMO commercial cultivation in Japan, North Korea, and the Russian Federation, which employ product-based regulations. It’s not clear how much this distinction matters. Transgenic crops and animals (aka GMOs) are product regulated in many countries including the US and Canada, while the EU, India, China and others regulate based on how the product is made. There is almost an equal number of countries with product- and process-based regulations. Whether regulations are based on the genetic process used to create the trait (conventional, mutagenesis, transgenesis, gene editing, etc.) or the final product.
