The public doesn’t trust GMOs. Will it trust CRISPR?

Is it possible that new gene editing techniques like CRISPR — along with new applications, new players, and a new way of talking with the public — give science the chance to press the reset button on genetic modification? We can argue about the impact of the genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, already in our system, modified to be toxic to insects, resistant to herbicides, or both. It’s been a mixed bag, with decreases in insecticide and our most toxic herbicides on the plus side, and an increase in herbicide-tolerant weeds on the minus side.But the argument against GMOs has never been just about the GMOs themselves. It is about a corporate-dominated, industrialized food system that’s focused on animal feed, processed foods, and biofuels and insufficiently attentive to soil health, environmental degradation, and biodiversity. GMOs have been a convenient handhold on a big, slippery problem.Enter CRISPR, a powerful new gene editing tool that’s everything GMOs aren’t.For one, CRISPR is academic where GMO is corporate. The technology was born at the University of California Berkeley and the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. Most of the GM