ABSTRACT
Biotechnology policies and regulations must be revised and updated to reflect the most recent advances in plant-breeding technology. New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBT) such as gene editing have been applied to address the myriad of challenges in plant breeding, while the use of NPBT as emerging biotechnological tools raises legal and ethical concerns. This study aims to highlight how gene editing is operationalized in the existing literature and examine the critical issues of ethical and legal issues of gene editing for plant breeding. We carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) to provide the current states of ethical and legal discourses surrounding this topic. We also identified critical research priority areas and policy gaps that must be addressed when designing the future governance of gene editing in plant breeding.
Subject(s)
Gene Editing , Plant Breeding , Gene Editing/methods , BiotechnologyABSTRACT
Biotechnology policies and regulations must be revised and updated to reflect the most recent advances in plant-breeding technology. New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBT) such as gene editing have been applied to address the myriad of challenges in plant breeding, while the use of NPBT as emerging biotechnological tools raises legal and ethical concerns. This study aims to highlight how gene editing is operationalized in the existing literature and examine the critical issues of ethical and legal issues of gene editing for plant breeding. We carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) to provide the current states of ethical and legal discourses surrounding this topic. We also identified critical research priority areas and policy gaps that must be addressed when designing the future governance of gene editing in plant breeding.
ABSTRACT
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have increasingly dominated commodity crop production in the world in the endeavour to address issues related to food security. However, this technology is not without problems, and can give rise to bioethical issues for consumers, particularly Muslims. The Islamic perspective on GMOs is complex and goes beyond just the determination of whether food is halal or not. If the food is halal, but the process to obtain it is not thoyibban, as it is unethical, then the food cannot be permitted under the Maqasid al-Shari'ah. This paper examines ethical issues pertaining to GM crops and how the related ethical issues contradict with Islamic principles beyond the binary distinction between the contaminated and uncontaminated food. Since GM technology is a contemporary issue that may not be directly addressed in the al-Quran and Sunnah, other Islamic sources should also be referred to when drawing up this code of ethics to achieve the objective of Syariah (Maqasid al-Shari'ah). Maqasid al-Shari'ah can be applied to frame the Islamic bioethics guideline as it is comprehensive and encompasses moral principles directly applicable to modern biotechnology. The paper subsequently explores how the principles of Maqasid al-Shari'ah are applied in addressing these ethical issues.
