The U.S. Regulations for Biotechnology Are Woefully Out of Date

But revamping the way we look at products created by genetic engineering and CRISPR is more difficult than you might think.

In April 2016, an unlikely thing made headlines: the common white button mushroom.

“Gene-Edited CRISPR Mushroom Escapes US Regulation,” wrote Nature.

“What’s a GMO? Apparently Not These Magic Mushrooms,” wrote Grist.

And from MIT Technology Review: “Who Approved the Genetically Engineered Foods Coming to Your Plate? No One.”

The white button mushroom in question looked like any other in the grocery store, with one imperceptible difference: It was missing a gene that codes for an enzyme called PPO, or polyphenol oxidase, which makes mushrooms turn brown when they’re bruised or cut. Scientists at Pennsylvania State University essentially turned off this PPO gene—one of six in the mushroom—with a new gene-editing tool called CRISPR, or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. CRISPR is a bit like a biological word processor. It zooms to a specific genetic sequence in any living thing—the biotech equivalent of using Ctrl+F. Then, the tool can add, delete, or replace genetic information...