Contention
CRISPR futures: Rethinking the politics of
genome editing
Amedeo Policante1
Human Geography
1–7
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/19427786231215673
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and Erica Borg2
Abstract
New genome editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 aspire to automate and standardize laboratory practices of genetic
engineering at the molecular scale. They have been promoted as a ‘revolutionary’ means of production, which will revitalize
industry, transform agribusiness and adapt it to changing climatic conditions. To realize this vision, a fundamental regulatory
shift is now being enacted by multiple national governments around the world from Argentina to Canada, Brazil, Australia,
South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, China and the European Union. As corporate science is directly
in the service of private entities guided by a strict market rationality, while public research is increasingly pushed to prioritize
immediate ‘industrial applications’ and the achievement of measurable ‘socio-economic impact’, genomic interventions are
mostly geared towards expanding, accelerating and securing the accumulation of capital on a global scale. Structural market
demands are embodied in gene-edited bodies produced for commercialization. While the emerging international regulatory
regime for gene-edited organisms has been largely shaped by discussions focused on technical questions of health and safety,
this tendency indicates the necessity of a wider democratic debate that would include the socio-economic, ethical and ecological concerns recently stressed by indigenous and peasant movements around the world. How will these new GM bodies
transform the way people live and work in agricultural lands, industrial facilities, barnyards and slaughterhouses, in biotech labs
and medical clinics? How will they affect lived ecologies? What types of multi-species worlds are being constructed through
bioengineering practices, by whom and according to what political visions?
Keywords
Genome editing, bioeconomy, political ecology, biotech industry, Anthropocene, industrial agriculture, molecular biology,
political economy of CRISPR, technological fix, green capitalism
Futuros CRISPR: repensar la política de edición del genoma
Resumen
Nuevas técnicas de edición del genoma como CRISPR-Cas9 aspiran a automatizar y estandarizar las prácticas de laboratorio
de ingeniería genética a escala molecular. Se han promovido como un medio de producción ‘revolucionario’ que revitalizará la
industria, transformará la agroindustria y la adaptará a las condiciones climáticas cambiantes. Para hacer realidad esta visión,
múltiples gobiernos nacionales de todo el mundo están promulgando un cambio regulatorio fundamental, desde Argentina
hasta Canadá, Brasil, Australia, Sudáfrica, Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Japón, China y la Unión Europea. Sin embargo, nos
preguntamos ¿de quién es el ‘bien’ que ha sido promovido por la reciente proliferación de organismos con genoma editado
y su liberación en la biosfera? Como la ciencia corporativa está directamente al servicio de entidades privadas guiadas por una
1
Institute of Contemporary History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon // IN2PAST – Associate Laboratory for Research and
Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, Lisbon, Portugal
2
King’s College, University of London, London, UK
Corresponding Author:
Amedeo Policante, Institute of Contemporary History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon, Av. de Berna 26, 1069-061 Lisbon,
Portugal.
Email: policante@fcsh.unl.pt
2
Human Geography 0(0)
estricta racionalidad de mercado, mientras que la investigación pública se ve cada vez más impulsada a priorizar las ‘aplicaciones industriales’ inmediatas y el logro de un ‘impacto socioeconómico’ mensurable, las intervenciones genómicas están
orientadas principalmente a expandir, acelerando y asegurando la acumulación de capital a escala global. El artículo ofrece
numerosos ejemplos de cómo cada una de estas demandas estructurales del mercado se materializa en cuerpos editados
genéticamente producidos para su comercialización. Si bien el régimen regulatorio internacional emergente para los organismos editados genéticamente ha sido moldeado en gran medida por discusiones centradas exclusivamente en cuestiones
técnicas de salud y seguridad, los movimientos indígenas y campesinos de todo el mundo han enfatizado la necesidad de
un debate democrático más amplio que aborde numerosos aspectos socioeconómicos, éticos y ecológicos. ¿Cómo
transformarán estos nuevos organismos transgénicos la forma en que la gente vive y trabaja en tierras agrícolas, instalaciones
industriales, corrales y mataderos, en laboratorios de biotecnología y clínicas médicas? ¿Cómo afectarán a las ecologías vividas?
¿Qué tipos de mundos multiespecíficos se están construyendo mediante prácticas de bioingeniería, por quién y según qué
visiones políticas?
Palabras clave
Edición del genoma, bioeconomía, ecología política, industria biotecnológica, antropoceno, agricultura industrial, biología
molecular, economía política de CRISPR, solución tecnológica, capitalismo verde
New genome editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 aspire
to automate and standardize laboratory practices of genetic
engineering at the molecular scale. They have been promoted
as a ‘revolutionary’ means of production, which will revitalize
industry, transform agribusiness and adapt it to changing
climatic conditions. One of the developers of CRISPR, for
instance, has been prominent in marketing the molecular
tool as a form of ‘genetic command and control,’ which will
enable new ways of governing the Anthropocene and mark
the beginning of hyper-modernity: ‘a new age in genetic engineering and biological mastery—a revolutionary era in which
the possibilities are limited only by our collective imagination’
(Doudna and Sternberg, 2017: xiii, 100).
To realize this vision, a fundamental regulatory shift is
now being enacted by diverse (and often competing) national
governments around the world from Argentina to Canada,
Brazil, Australia, South Africa, the United States, Japan
and China (Ahmad et al., 2021; Mallapaty, 2022). This
move has been encouraged by neoclassical economists and
corporate actors as a welcome neoliberal reform: a cutting
of the legislative red-tape supposedly restricting the selfserving ingenuity of corporations. Once ‘freed’ from cumbersome legislations, the assumption is that companies will
develop biotech fixes – in the form of new generations of
genetically engineered organisms – to a plethora of intertwined socio-ecological crises, including climate change,
biodiversity loss, desertification, hunger, water pollution,
pandemic spillover and industrial crisis.
Following this global trend, the United Kingdom has
recently signed into law a Genetic Technology Bill. The
new law liberalizes the release and marketing of gene-edited
‘plants and animals, and the marketing of food and feed produced from such plants and animals’ (UK, 2023). Introduced
by members of the Conservative Party, the Bill faced a vocal
opposition by the Green Party, the Scottish Government and
various environmental NGOs and polls that indicate the
discontent of a wide majority of the public. It had, nonetheless, powerful backers. The British Society of Plant Breeders
Limited, an organization representing the interest of agribusiness corporations, complimented the Department of
Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ commitment to
‘paving the way for Britain to become the best place in the
world to invest in agri-food research and innovation’
(BSPB, 2022).
As of today, the European Union (EU) remains one of the
few major global markets where genome-edited organisms
(GEOs) are strictly regulated. In fact, a 2018 decision by
the European Court of Justice reiterated that any organism
whose genome has been modified by artificial mutagenesis
is ipso facto a genetically modified organism (ECJ, 2018).
From this perspective, it does not matter if the genetic mutation has been induced by recombinant techniques or by
employing a bacterial enzyme such as Cas9; it does not
matter if the induced mutation is large or small. If its
genome has been altered through modern techniques of artificial mutagenesis, the resulting organism is by definition a
genetically modified organism. As a result, the production
and commercialization of all forms of GMOs – including traditional transgenic organisms as well as new forms of GEOs
– are subjected to precautionary regulations that impose risk
assessment, monitoring and labelling regulations (Gelinsky
and Hilbeck, 2018).
Industry representatives and technical experts have come
out in opposition to this ‘process-based’ regulatory approach.
While this group cannot deny that the genome of CRISPR
crops is modified by means of targeted mutagenesis, they
argue that these genome-edited organisms are fundamentally different from previous generations of GM crops
since ‘genome editing produces genomic alterations that are
similar to those that occur through spontaneous and induced
mutation’ (Urnov et al., 2018). This position, echoed by
many representatives of agribusiness and the biotech industry,
Policante and Borg
suggests that only those organisms whose engineered
mutations could never spontaneously occur – such as chimeric organisms – should be regulated as GMOs, while
genome-edited organisms should be considered for deregulation. The recently published ‘CRISPR-files’, assembled
by the Corporate Europe Observatory, has uncovered a
range of covert lobbying tactics used by corporate actors
to push these revisionist perspective and manufacture
public support for deregulation (CEO, 2021).
Partially as a result of these pressures, the European
Commission has finally approved – in the first week of
July 2023 – a new draft law that would deregulate the authorization, risk assessment and labelling of so-called New
Genomic Technique (NGT): a freshly coined concept referring to recently introduced techniques of targeted mutagenesis such as CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short
palindromic repeats), ZFNs (zinc finger nucleases) and
TALEN (transcription activator-like effector nucleases).
The new draft law, which will now have to gain the approval
of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers,
stipulates that most genome-edited plants produced via
these techniques will no longer necessitate case-by-case
approval and will no longer need to be labelled as ‘genetically modified’ once marketed. While existing GMO legislation in the EU has often taken the form of directives – that
allow states some flexibility and the possibility of departing
from set European standards – the new draft law has been
presented as a strict ‘regulation’ that will bind the hands of
member states. Therefore, individual member states will
not be able to restrict the cultivation of gene-edited plants
in their countries nor limit their commercialization (EU
Commission, 2023). According to a preparatory study sponsored by the Commission, the law will facilitate the growth of
the European biotech industry since ‘over 100 plants, several
dozen animals and medicinal applications that are now in the
advanced R&D stage could reach the market by 2030’ (EU
Commission, 2021).
The effects of this recent round of liberalizations are now
cascading through the world market, bringing a new menagerie of gene-edited organisms out of the laboratories, into
agricultural farms and fields and, eventually, onto people’s
plates. Numerous studies have shown the extent to which
mutant ecologies are proliferating. Most recently, transgenic
glowing fish commercialized as conspicuous pets for wealthy
aquarium owners have been found to multiply in multiple
Brazilian streams, altering ecosystem dynamics and local
biodiversity (Magalhães et al., 2022). Similarly, GM crops
have been found to thrive well beyond their allocated areas
taking the form of feral GM weeds in rural areas, road
verges and ports (Paredes, 2021). ‘Gene flow’, explains a
plant geneticist at the University of California, ‘is a regular
occurrence among plants. So if you put a gene out there it’s
going to escape. It’s going to go to other varieties of the
same crop, or its wild relatives […]. It’s clear that zero contamination is impossible’ (Randerson, 2008; Snow, 2002).
3
The literature on the multiple risks associated with genome
editing is ponderous. Off-target effects, unexpected mutations,
genetic drifts and ecological unexpected consequences are constantly reported (Zhang et al., 2015; Warwick et al., 2009;
Schaefer et al., 2017; Giovannetti et al., 2005; Tabashnik
et al., 2013; Gatehouse et al., 2011). Additionally, security
agencies constantly warn the public of the constant possibility
that new genomic biotechnologies may enable new forms of
bioaccidents as well as acts of bioterrorism and genetic
warfare (Darpa, 2016; Mullin, 2016). Despite these persisting
concerns coming from within established centres of scientific
knowledge and state power, powerful structural tendencies
are pushing the search for ever-more effective means of
‘genetic command and control’. Sovereign states and transnational corporations are locked in a competitive environment
that fuels fears of falling behind in the technoscientific arms
race for genetic control and demand the erosion of established
precautionary mechanisms. In short, the on-going flow of
public and private investments into the genomic industry is
fuelled by the same coercive laws of exploitation and competition, which have sustained the acceleration of industrial production throughout the so-called Anthropocene epoch (Borg
and Policante, 2022).
Yet, paradoxically, the ecological crisis caused by that
very industrial acceleration is now presented as demanding
the urgent development of new genomic biotechnologies,
which would enable the adaptation of living organisms to
new ecological conditions. This has been, for instance, the
argument put forward repeatedly by Bill Gates (2018), for
instance, in his influential article Gene Editing For Good.
We may want to inquire, however, whose ‘good’ has been
promoted by the recent proliferation of genome-edited organisms and their release into the biosphere. In most cases,
genomic interventions intend to produce ‘better’ life-forms,
which can increase the efficiency and resilience of existing
bio-production systems. Indeed, the appeal of genomic engineering is exactly founded on this promise of producing a
‘better life’. What ‘better’ means remains, however, a political question whose answer is presently monopolized by those
who control the new means of molecular production. As corporate science is directly in the service of private entities
guided by a strict market rationality (Rudy and Coppin,
2007), while public research is increasingly pushed to prioritize immediate ‘industrial applications’ and the achievement
of measurable ‘socio-economic impact’ (Rhodes et al., 2018;
Legg et al., 2021), genomic interventions are mostly geared
towards expanding, accelerating and securing the accumulation of capital on a global scale. In this way, genome editing
represents the culmination of a long-standing historical trajectory characterized by the introduction of ever new technoscientific means to overcome existing ‘biological barriers’ to capital
accumulation (Mann and Dickinson, 1978; Kloppenburg,
1988).
Corporations strive, first and foremost, to accelerate the
biological processes mobilized in production. In agriculture
4
and forestry, a great deal of experimentation is focused on
finding new ways to accelerate the growth rate of crops
and trees; in pharmacology, metabolic engineering aims at
accelerating microbial processes of protein synthesis; in the
livestock industry, researchers tirelessly pursue the age-old
goal of ‘getting animals ready for their fate in less time’.
Capital’s characteristic need for speed is embodied in fastgrowing salmons, tiger puffers and red sea breams (Roy
et al. 2022); in fast-growing myostatin knock-out sheep
and cattle (Crispo et al., 2015); in genetically modified eucalyptus trees that are ready for harvest in 5 and a half years
instead of 7 (Ledford 2014); in engineered bacterial strains,
whose metabolism is redesigned to accelerate fermentation
processes (Devanthi and Gkatzionis, 2019); and in ‘photosynthetically efficient’ crops (Kromdijk et al., 2016).
Countless genomic interventions are directed towards a metabolic acceleration meant to speed up both cellular processes
of protein synthesis and socio-economic processes of commodity production (Borg and Policante, 2022).
Genome engineering also assists the expansion of capital
accumulation by opening up new frontiers of production.
Adjusting living bodies to perform ‘better’ in otherwise
highly stressful environments, for instance, can further entrench
industrial practices of factory farming. Recombinetics’ Slick
Holsteins – a new variety of gene-edited cows recently
approved for commercialization in the United States – is
described by company representatives as being adapted to
‘withstand the stress caused by tropical production conditions’ (Harrison, 2022; Sonstergard, 2019). While this
genomic intervention has been oft-publicized as ecological
and humanitarian, it is likely to accelerate the on-going
expansion of intensive beef farming in the tropical regions.
The environmental impact of industrial livestock breeding in
the Global South is already profound. Indeed, cattle ranching
is the largest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
(Skidmore et al., 2021). The introduction of increasingly efficient living means of meat production is likely to intensify –
rather than reverse – this trend. Naturally Cool™ cows have
already been hailed for their potential of turning Brazil into
‘another viable source in addition to the US for Angus beef
and add billions of dollars in revenue to the industry’ (BTO,
2018; Grossi et al., 2019).
Genome editing can facilitate the expansion of capital accumulation into new geographical areas, but it can also facilitate
the intensification of production in loco. Take, for instance,
pigs, chickens and cows that have been engineered to resist
viral diseases (Pal and Chakravarty, 2019: 271–296; Mehra
and Kumar, 2022). These genetic interventions are often presented as an expression of a rather surprising ethical turn taken
by giant multinational conglomerates that profit from industrial breeding in concentrated animal feeding operations.
Genetic uniformity and confined living quarters have created
ideal breeding grounds for viruses. Pandemic threats have
imposed limits to the density of animal bodies that can be
safely kept in each facility. Thus, genomic research aimed at
Human Geography 0(0)
conferring disease resistance to factory-farmed animals facilitates the accumulation of animal capital by reducing the losses
caused by recurrent epidemics. Disease resistance opens the
door to a further concentration of bodies in increasingly confined and unsanitary spaces. This would not only create the
perfect conditions for new pandemics to proliferate – in turn
sparking new calls for gene editing interventions in an
endless spiral – it would also magnify the significant ecological impact of the livestock industry. As recent estimates
already attribute 12 to 18% of global greenhouse emissions
to the livestock sector, anything that contributes to its further
expansion is likely to accelerate global warming and ecological crisis (Harrison et al., 2021).
This leads directly to a third dimension of the new genomic
politics. As rapidly changing planetary biogeochemical cycles
alter the ecological conditions for both capital accumulation
and human well-being, genome engineering is increasingly
evoked as a technoscientific fix by which complex social
issues will be swiftly resolved. For instance, the Impact
Report submitted by the EU Commission in support of the liberalization of new genomic techniques presents the latter as a
response to ‘the megatrends climate change, environmental
degradation and aggravating resource scarcity’ and as ‘one
tool contributing to the necessary adaptation of the food
systems at global level’ (EU Commission, 2023b). Genetic
bioengineering, here and elsewhere, is presented as a means
of climate adaptation. Consider, for instance, heat-resistant
cattle, drought-resilient crops, GM rice designed to prosper in
high salinity environments, CRISPR crops ‘well-suited for
use in future conditions where temperatures and other climatic
conditions near equatorial regions render farmlands less fertile’
and genetically modified semi-dwarf bananas ‘more resistant to
lodging as a result of intense winds, typhoons, and storms,
anticipated to increase in severity as a result of climate
change’ (Karavolias et al., 2021).
Global warming is also set to magnify the frequency, severity
and incidence of a multiplicity of pathogens threatening both
plants and animals. In response, agriculturalists are knocking
out genes – disrupting their cellular expression – in an attempt
to reduce the ‘susceptibility loci’ normally exploited by pathogens. Genome editing now enables the production of wheat,
tomatoes and grapes resistant to powdery mildew cucumbers
that can withstand yellow mosaic virus and rice resilient to
bacterial leaf blight (Langner et al., 2018). Agribusiness is
searching for new ways of securing its living means of production in a warmer and increasingly unpredictable climate.
Biotechnological fixes are set to augment the resilience of
life-forms mobilized during industrial processes of production, while enabling corporations to preserve profitability
by adapting to increasingly pressing demands – both by
consumers and by legislators – for ‘environmental consciousness’ and ‘sustainability’ (Rutt and Jakobsen, 2022;
Weis, 2010).
Corporations no longer content themselves with simply
appropriating the living bodies of plants and animals.
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Policante and Borg
Corporate technoscience purposefully designs their internal
metabolism, and in that way, it redesigns the countless
living vectors that constitute the global biosphere. It is
driving a biological revolution, which will ripple through
the everyday lives of people everywhere. Since each
species shapes its own ecological niche, through its metabolic
interactions with the surrounding environment, genome
editing constitutes an indirect way of constructing the world
through the industrial production of living bodies. The metabolic processes taking place at an intracellular scale within
each organism shape local and planetary metabolic assemblages
and biogeochemical cycles. By purposefully modifying the
metabolism of thousands of individual bodies, the biotech
industry is slowly altering eco-social metabolisms on a planetary scale in ways that are neither planned nor easy to predict.
In their most audacious visions, molecular biologists
promote genome editing technologies as enabling new
forms of environmental governance and planetary biogeoengineering: for instance, investing resources towards
the development of genetically engineered bacteria to accelerate carbon capture in oceans or developing new forms of
genetic sterilization to ‘shape ecosystems’ and ‘manage invasive species’ (Ma et al., 2022; Nguyen et al., 2023; Devos
et al., 2022). In this emerging imaginary, the gene may be
turned into a lever to control metabolic pathways at everlarger scales. Who controls the gene controls the body,
who controls the body controls the species and who controls
the species controls its lived environment.
Yet, there is a troubling tension at the heart of molecular
biology between the growing realization that even the simplest organisms remain too complex to be properly understood at the molecular level and the hyper-modernist
attempt to modify those very organisms to make them
increasingly legible, predictable and industrially exploitable
(Chan et al., 2005). Rather paradoxically, as molecular
biology makes visible a world of irreducible biological complexity, genome engineering is embarking on increasingly
ambitious programs to rationalize that living complexity.
This hyper-modernist attitude reflects a form of scientific
reductionism in which organisms are increasingly conceived
as reprogrammable ‘molecular factories’, whose metabolism
can be functionally tweaked and engineered. Yet, far from
achieving a complete and stable control over the biological
realm, genome editing seems to foster a proliferation of
what Besky and Blanchette recently labelled ‘troubled ecologies’: contradictory spaces that seldom function ‘as perfections of capital’s capacity to exploit nature’, but rather
represent ‘experimental (and remarkably unstable) projects
on and with other beings’ (2019: 6).
While public debates are mostly limited to questions surrounding the health and safety of old and new generations of
GM crops, other questions remain largely obscured: How
will these new GM bodies transform the way people live
and work in agricultural lands, industrial facilities, barnyards
and slaughterhouses, in biotech labs and medical clinics?
How will they affect lived ecologies? What types of multispecies societies are being constructed through bioengineering practices, by whom and according to what political
visions? As we write, these questions are kept at the
margins of debates around genome editing by rendering the
issues technical and/or juridical – by presenting them as
unapproachable to anyone apart from approved scientific
and industry specialists (Li, 2007: 123–155). As a result,
the emerging international regulatory regime for gene-edited
organisms has been largely shaped by discussions purely
focused on technical questions of health and safety –
whose answer has been monopolized by experts’ opinions
– while socio-economic, ethical and ecological concerns
have been marginalized. A sweeping de-regulation of
genome editing practices is taking place across a number of
countries; an epochal shift in the politics of science is
being pushed forward with minimal public discussion.
Yet, technoscience is not a separate republic sanitized
from political projects and social struggles. Precisely
because every genetically engineered body is connected
through the web of life to all other life-forms, there is an
urgent need to build communal decision-making on the
common genomic heritage. Democratizing controversial
technologies such as genome editing cannot simply mean
to make them more easily and widely available to corporations around the world. Seed-sharing co-operatives like
Navdanya in India or the Sme’tsunubil ta shekel Yu’um
(‘Mother Seeds in Resistance’) in Chiapas, as well as farmers’
organisations like La Vía Campesina and Movimento Sim
Terra have long resisted gene editing as a neo-colonial technology, which restricts autonomy and creates dependence on corporations (Scoones, 2008; Roy, 2015; Heller, 2002; Lapegna,
2016). Numerous indigenous groups have contested the way
in which genetic engineering reproduces instrumentalist conceptions of nature, erasing alternative ways of knowing, thinking and relating with nature (Tauli-Corpuz, 2001).
These struggles – despite their ambiguities and contradictions – pose a fundamental question: what would a
more radical democratization of these biotechnologies
entail? From this perspective, the demands of democracy
become impossible to contain within the limited technical
considerations peddled by corporate lobbyists. Rather, it
spills into other areas: into the need to construct a
society in which every person has the time and education
to participate in collective decision-making processes
about what natures should be collectively produced, in
which self-governance is not restricted to answering
ready-made questions and in which people can engage
in meaningful collective decision-making about organizing our being-in-nature.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
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Funding
The IHC is funded through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a
Tecnologia, under the projects UIDB/04209/2020 and UIDP/
04209/2020.
ORCID iD
Amedeo Policante
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7189-5147
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Author Biographies
Amedeo Policante is a senior research fellow at the Institute
of Contemporary History of the Nova University of Lisbon.
Erica Borg is a political ecologist and geographer based at
King’s College, University of London.